


In My Defense, I Have None

by likearecord



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Complete, Fake/Pretend Relationship, He's as confused as you are, He's never been Neil Josten before, Least of all Neil Josten, M/M, Multi, Neil Josten is still learning the nuances of interpersonal relationships, No one knows what Neil Josten is gonna do next, Slightly possessive Andrew Minyard, but not like you think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:47:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 65,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26205913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likearecord/pseuds/likearecord
Summary: Jean asks for a favor. Neil finds himself at the center of a territorial squabble. It's him. He's the territory.“But why me?”“You are my only good option. Aaron is straight. Andrew is rabid. Allison and Seth are on and off so often it’s impossible to keep track. Dan and Matt are a couple and getting them both to agree to pretend to date me would be harder. Renee doesn’t like men. Katelyn is lovely but Aaron would be angry. I don’t know which of the others started or stopped dating over the summer. That leaves you."“What about Kevin?”Jean scoffs. “You cannot be serious.”“He’s…” What is Kevin? Not any better at telling Riko ‘no’ than Jean is, and, subsequently, probably not great at lying to him. Also, is it really believable that Kevin would jeopardize the team and their athletic careers by shitting where he eats? Probably not. Kevin’s amended hierarchy of needs just has the word EXY at the base. Somewhere far above that are pedestrian concerns like ‘food’ and ‘water’ and ‘shelter.’“Taller,” Neil finishes lamely. “He’s taller.”
Relationships: Alvarez/Laila Dermott, Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau, Katelyn/Aaron Minyard, Matt Boyd/Danielle "Dan" Wilds, Neil Josten & Jean Moreau, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Pretend Neil Josten/Jean Moreau
Comments: 617
Kudos: 1550





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, here's what I wanted: I wanted to write a High School AU, I wanted to make everyone around Neil _very_ confusing, I wanted to see how Andrew would react if Neil started actually dating someone else, and I wanted to over-use italics to indicate speech in another language. 
> 
> I've never actually posted anything chapter-by-chapter, but as I was writing I realized I was so concerned about getting it done that I wasn't lingering as long in the relationships as I'd like to. So, now we're giving this a shot! Should be 10-12 chapters. The first two and a half are finished. Let's just see what happens.
> 
> Shout out in the tags to whoever made that photoset where Neil Josten is the horse in the hospital. Made my year.

_”I heard the evil twin went to jail.”_

_“Juvie.”_

_“What?”_

_“He’s only like 17, he wouldn’t go to jail-jail.”_

_“God, whatever. Nobody saw him for weeks.”_

_“I heard he and Josten robbed a bank.”_

_“You did not.”_

_“Stole a car, then.”_

_“I call bullshit. I don’t think Andrew could actually tolerate teamwork long enough to do crime with someone else.”_

_“Shut up. There he is. I_ told _you not to say his name out loud. Now you’ve gone and summoned him.”_

Neil is putting twenty-five of the seventy-five pounds worth of textbooks he’s been given in the first week of junior year into his locker when Jean appears out of nowhere and leans elegantly against the metal beside him. 

“I need your help,” Jean says. His tone carries its usual hint of implied disapproval but his eyes are darting up and down the hallway; Neil echos the movement. He doesn’t see anything unusual—just a billion hormonal teenagers peacocking around each other. One douchebag is playing “Old Town Road” on his phone so loud that Neil assumes he’s in danger of literally dropping dead at any moment if he doesn’t get an emergency dose of attention. If that guy was any closer to Andrew’s locker, he might get more of it than he bargained for.

“Okay,” Neil says cautiously, returning his attention to Jean. “Maybe.”

“I told Ri—,” Jean cuts himself off, hesitates, looks around them again. The level of subterfuge and distress Jean is bringing to this puts Neil on edge. If it’s to spare Riko’s feelings, it’s that much stupider. That shithead doesn’t even deserve the courtesy of keeping the insults whispered behind his back. Neil stiffens and opens his locker door wider so it will block them from the other end of the hallway. Jean resumes in French, “ _I told One we were together._ ” 

“Together?” Neil echos, confused. 

“ _Dating_ ,” Jean explains. He peeks his head out enough to see past Neil’s locker door and then ducks back under cover. He’s drawing so much more attention to them than he would be if he just fucking stood still. He’d get them both killed in the real world. 

“Why would you do that?” He asks, drawing Jean’s attention back to him. 

“ _Neil_ ,” Jean says, exasperated. “En français, s’il vous plaît.”

“Jean.”

“ _He was flirting. I panicked. I needed an excuse._ ”

“ _You could say no. The word is in your vocabulary._ ”

“ _To_ him? _I don’t have a death wish._ ”

“You know that’s really fucked up, right?”

“ _Neil_.” 

Neil sighs and turns his attention back to the locker. He can either carry three books, each the approximate weight of a sturdy toddler, and not come back to his locker until after school, or he can split it up and have to make another visit. Based on his luck at the lockers so far today, he should go with all three. Glumly, he starts cramming them into his backpack. 

“ _But why me?_ ”

“ _You are my only good option. Aaron is straight. Andrew is rabid. Allison and Seth are on and off so often it’s impossible to keep track. Dan and Matt are a couple and getting them both to agree to pretend to date me would be harder. Renee doesn’t like men. Katelyn is lovely but Aaron would be angry. I don’t know which of the others started or stopped dating over the summer. That leaves you._ ”

“ _What about Kevin?_ ”

Jean scoffs. “ _You cannot be serious._ ”

“ _He’s…_ ” What is Kevin? Not any better at telling Riko ‘no’ than Jean is, and, subsequently, probably not great at lying to him. Also, is it really believable that Kevin would jeopardize the team and their athletic careers by shitting where he eats? Probably not. Kevin’s amended hierarchy of needs just has the word EXY at the base. Somewhere far above that are pedestrian concerns like ‘food’ and ‘water’ and ‘shelter.’

“ _Taller_ ,” Neil finishes lamely. “ _He’s taller_.”

“ _I need you_ ,” Jean says. “Je t’implore.”

“ _Okay, fine. What do you need me to do?_ ” Neil sighs. 

“ _Hold my hand. We sit together at lunch and practice. Maybe the very occasional chaste kiss. Pretend you like me. Don’t look at me like that. These are normal things high school students do._ ”

“How long?” 

“ _Until he moves on?_ ” Jean lifts his hands in surrender. “ _Or, I guess, until you want to date someone else. It could be fun for you, too. He’ll hate thinking you have something he doesn’t. And I am an excellent partner._ ” 

In a blinding surge of clarity, Neil realizes why he is actually the only safe and sure choice: he doesn’t date and he doesn’t tell people his business. There aren’t really any romantic prospects on Neil’s horizon and he likes it that way. He is the only one of them who is reliably both single and secretive enough for this to work. Almost no one in his life can really anticipate what he’s going to do at any given time. His closest friend is a guy who threatens to kill him on the regular, put him into his phone as ‘idiot’, and once literally wrote ‘I hate you’ in Sharpie on the toe of Neil’s shoe.

Actually, speaking of Andrew—where is he? Jean’s being so weird that Neil is almost surprised he hasn’t shown up yet. Andrew’s locker is in the same wing, maybe twenty down, on the other side of the hall. Neil looks over and catches Andrew’s eyes already on him, his body language wary and watching. Jean follows Neil’s line of sight and steps forward, cutting it off. 

“ _You cannot tell him,_ ” Jean says. “ _You cannot tell anyone._ ”

“I—can’t,” Neil frowns, shaking his head. “ _I can’t lie to Andrew._ ” 

“ _I don’t trust him,_ ” Jean insists. “ _He’s unpredictable._ ”

Neil frowns harder. Andrew is anything but unpredictable. And if Neil knows one thing for sure in this world, it’s that Andrew wouldn’t ever tell anyone Neil’s secrets, but—but this isn’t really Neil’s secret. It’s Jean’s. And Neil can’t deny that it’s the kind of thing Andrew would think was so pathetic and pointless that he might out them for any number of reasons, including a fleeting moment of boredom. That’s not the real problem with lying to him, though. Not as far as Neil is concerned. 

“ _You don’t understand,_ ,” Neil says. “ _I just can’t. I’d have to tell him._ ” 

Jean places both of his hands on Neil’s shoulders and looks at him very seriously. “ _Neil_ ,” he says firmly. “ _This is life-or-death_.”

“It actually isn’t,” Neil says. “ _But you still don’t get it. Andrew knows more about my life than I do. What is it you want me to_ tell him _that will make him believe this?_ ”

He watches Jean’s face go momentarily blank, his mind spinning for a good answer. Neil’s thoughts spin in kind, but he literally cannot come up with a single plausible story he could try to sell to Andrew that has any chance of being bought.

“ _We got closer over the summer?_ ” Jean suggests. 

“ _When, exactly?_ ” Neil asks. He’d seen Jean during the summer, sure, but not particularly often. Which Andrew would know. Because they’d spent the vast majority of it in Neil’s apartment together, keeping the A/C on incredibly high in defiance of the electric bill, and being shamelessly antisocial. Other than letting a tightly controlled list of approved visitors in for video games and meals and cards and horror movies, they’d avoided any exposure to ‘summer parties’ or ‘bonfires’ or ‘large social gatherings in general.’ They’d gotten so comfortable occupying the space together that Andrew had fully moved into Neil’s guest room for a few weeks when Erik was in town to visit Nicky. Neil’s actually not sure he went anywhere or did anything this summer without Andrew being aware of it. Jean _had_ come over with Kevin a couple of times, but Neil doesn’t think those visits would actually help the cause here. There’d been nothing romantic about the four of them trying to kill each other with cartoon cars.

“ _Texting?_ ” Jean offers. “ _It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care about other people. He probably won’t even ask._ ”

Neil bristles. He thinks they should all know better than to talk shit about Andrew in front of him by now, but it’s particularly egregious to do it when Jean’s _asking him a favor_. “Hey,” he snaps. “Don’t—” 

Suddenly, his locker door slams shut, the metal whooshing past his head fast enough to move the air. The closure reveals Andrew’s dangerously blank face, expressionless and unmoving other than the hazel eyes drilling into Neil’s. 

“History,” Andrew says. 

“Of course,” Jean says smoothly. Neil reminds himself very firmly not to flinch in surprise when Jean reaches out and grabs his hand, squeezing it. It’s harder to not react when Jean _lifts Neil’s hand_ and _kisses his knuckles_ like they’re in one of those fucking romance movies Nicky is always making them watch. “I will see you later, mon chou.”

Andrew watches Jean go, then turns back to Neil. His eyes are narrowed the barest degree. His jaw is set a little firmer than usual. The corners of his mouth are almost imperceptibly turned down—Neil can only tell because Andrew’s bottom lip is slightly fuller than it normally is. There’s the tiniest hint of creases on the sides of his eyes. Everything about his face screams _explain_. 

But Neil can’t. At least, not yet. He hikes his backpack up higher on his shoulder and smiles, trying and probably failing to give the impression of unremarkable innocence. “History?”

He doesn’t start walking yet, though; he stands there, bag over his shoulder, schooling his face into a bland expression and waiting for Andrew to deliver his judgment. Eventually, Andrew reaches out two fingers and taps them on Neil’s chest. “Later,” Andrew commands. It’s not a question.

“Later,” Neil agrees. He’ll have a little time to come up with a cover story. His stomach twists unpleasantly at the idea of intentionally and blatantly lying to Andrew. He doesn’t think it would work, anyway. And if it did, wouldn’t Andrew be furious when he eventually found out? He likes Jean, but there are limits.

___

Jean wedges himself in between Neil and Matt at lunch, pressing close against Neil’s side. “Mon bijou,” he says warmly, smiling into Neil’s eyes.

It’s fucking weird. 

A fork clatters loudly to the table. Neil hears a strident “ _Hold the fuck up,_ ” and blinks away from Jean to find Allison’s hands planted on either side of her tray and her eyes intently looking them over. “Someone explain this immediately.” 

Andrew, directly across from Neil, takes advantage of the distraction to steal Kevin’s pudding from his tray, the picture of indifference. Everyone else’s reactions run the spectrum from Andrew’s apathy to Allison’s scrutiny.

“Neil and I are together,” Jean announces. He’s battling the natural haughtiness of his voice, but it’s not particularly effective. You can’t take the French out of the boy.

“We have decided not to hide our love,” Neil says drily. 

The high-pitched, undignified noise Allison makes even manages to draw Aaron’s attention from Katelyn’s neckline. Across from Neil, Andrew’s hand stills halfway to his mouth. The pudding on his spoon trembles. He never misses a thing; he must know something shady is happening. Neil quickly turns his eyes back to Allison so that Andrew won’t see the lie in them and call him out on it. Not publicly, at least. 

“Wait a minute,” Matt says. “Neil is on the market?”

“Was,” Jean corrects. “Now he’s mine.” 

From the corner of his eye, Neil sees Andrew’s spoon get shoved back into the pudding cup. He is going to get _so_ much shit for this. Andrew is going to mock him relentlessly. 

“Now, hold on,” Matt says. He extends an arm across Jean’s chest and pushes him back enough to lean around him and smile winningly at Neil. “This changes things. Neil, Dan and I have talked about this. You should be our boyfriend instead.”

Neil flicks his eyes to Dan. She shrugs and grins wickedly at him. “I mean, we do have twice as much love to offer. And sex. Twice as much sex.”

“Okay,” Allison says. She claps her hands together decisively. “It’s decided. Neil can be everyone’s boyfriend.”

“Hard pass,” Aaron says. “If I want to beat my head against a brick wall, I’ll pick one that doesn’t run its mouth so much.”

“That’s fine,” Allison says. “It would be weird to have twins at the orgies anyway.”

Neil chokes on the sip of water he was trying to sneak in while everyone else was occupied. 

“No orgies,” Jean says loudly. Maybe a bit too loudly, if the squealing of chairs turning and clothes rustling around them is any indication. He starts vigorously pounding on Neil’s back like that’s going to help him get his water down the right pipe. “I’m very monogamous. I do not...how do you say? Share well with others.”

Neil tips his head back enough to stare at the drop ceiling rising two stories above them. The fluorescent lights flicker here and there, running the spectrum from bright white to ivory. They offer him no sympathy. 

“No orgies,” Neil says, sighing. “Jean is already more than I can handle.”

Allison snickers. Renee covers her mouth with her napkin. Katelyn giggles. Neil fights the habit of looking to Andrew for his reactions. 

“This is a bad idea,” Kevin says. “It will interfere with the team.”

“It won’t,” Jean says. 

“Keep your personal shit off my court,” Kevin warns. 

“We don’t even play on the same side of it,” Neil says. 

Kevin makes a disgusted noise. “That’s even worse. At least if you played the same position, you could drill together.”

“I think they’ll be drilling just fine,” Allison says. “Lots of drilling.”

“Okay,” Neil says. He stands and picks up his tray. “Let’s never do this again.”

He finally musters up the nerve to look at Andrew. Are they selling this? Does he already know what’s up? What if Andrew _does_ believe it and thinks it’s disgusting or pathetic or boring and wants nothing to do with him anymore? A frisson of anxiety creeps up Neil’s chest. When he meets Andrew’s eyes, they’re already locked on him. Neil can’t read his expression at all. 

“Wait, mon souffle,” Jean says, grabbing his half-finished meal and standing. “I’ll walk with you.”

___

The car is silent after they drop Kevin and Jean at Wymack’s after school. Andrew doesn’t turn the music up, so the only sounds filling the car are the road rolling beneath them and the precise, mechanical click-pulse of the turn signals. When they pull up in front of Neil’s apartment, Andrew puts the car in park but doesn’t turn off the engine.

The silence stretches. Neil can’t figure out if he’s supposed to start explaining or if Andrew is processing, or what, so he stays quiet and still in his seat. Silences with Andrew are usually comfortable, but this one makes Neil want to squirm. 

Finally, after what feels like half an hour, Andrew turns to him. 

“You’re swinging now?”

Neil still doesn’t have a plausible lie. And the hours between Jean’s bombshell and this moment haven’t made Neil actually _want_ to lie to Andrew. He finds that he just can’t do it. At the same time, he agreed to help Jean. He sighs and shakes his head. “Can we maybe just...not talk about it?”

He watches as Andrew considers this. After a minute, Andrew asks, “You’re good with it?”

“I don’t need rescuing,” Neil says. He can’t help smiling at Andrew, the warm spark of fondness in his chest fueled by the memory of Jean’s dismissive bullshit earlier. “I promise.”

Finally, Andrew nods. “Okay.” He turns off the car and twists to grab the motorcycle helmet out of the backseat. 

Neil locks the Kia his uncle had bought for him and watches as Andrew straps on his helmet and straddles his motorcycle, peeling off without another word.

____

To Neil’s immense surprise, fake-dating Jean isn’t really that bad. It’s actually kind of...fun? Most of the time Neil has spent with Jean previously has been in the company of Kevin, whose intensity and general single-mindedness tend to discourage the kind of bitchy people-watching Neil enjoys.

Without Kevin around as a buffer, Neil discovers that Jean is almost as good at blistering commentary as he is. Even better, doing it in French means that they don’t have to hold back at all. Not to mention, all that practice is polishing the rust off his grammar and vocabulary. 

Their sixth day of fake dating, Jean jogs up the bleachers to flop down next to Neil on a break. “Doudou,” Jean says smoothly. He leans over to kiss the side of Neil’s head. Neil doesn’t have a lot of experience with PDA—or even just A, really—but Jean seems able to smooth over Neil’s awkwardness with an easy, physical affection. He doesn’t push any boundaries, either. Neil hasn’t been asked to make out in the hallways or walk around with a hand in his back pocket or dry hump him on the picnic tables outside, which is apparently an essential coupling ritual at this school. 

Neil half laughs and bumps his shoulder against Jean’s. “None of them would recognize that as an endearment.” 

Jean waves this off as unimportant. “ _Look at his highness._ ”

“Which one?” Neil asks. On this court, that could go at least two ways. 

Jean gives him a disparaging look. Why is it that half the people he knows look at him like that all the time? Maybe it’s him. He turns to scan the court, expecting to find a clear answer to justify the ‘use your eyes, dumbass’ face Jean is making at him. Dan and Riko had called the freshmen over for more focused attention right after the break, which means the rest of them are mostly discreetly staying out of the way to extend the rest. He can spot most of them from his position. Allison and Seth are having some kind of intense conversation on the other side of the gym that involves a lot of close eye contact and aborted hand gestures. At the visitor end of the court, Matt is demonstrating a variety of exotic push-ups for the sophomores. Andrew and Renee are walking laps. Neil has a sudden longing to go join them and give his unsolicited opinion on whatever they’re talking about, but he is tethered to his seat by Jean’s warm, dry hand and their secret. Both goalies look up at him, maybe sensing his gaze; Renee offers him a gentle smile, but Andrew just stares until something Renee says distracts him. Aaron is lying on his back on the team bench, his phone aloft, his fingers flying on the screen. He almost drops it on his face twice in the few seconds Neil is watching. 

Neil finally spots Kevin, one of the highnesses, and finds him scowling disapprovingly in their general direction. 

“Non,” Jean says. He takes Neil’s hand and slots their fingers together in his lap, angling their knuckles discreetly towards the cluster of freshmen. “ _The other one_.”

Neil turns his head and sees Riko, whose face is darkening as he takes in their joined hands. This is - well, Neil is not ashamed to admit that this is the best part of this whole faking dating thing. Riko has seemed too off balance by the sudden change to start any shit, but his displeasure is too radioactive to contain. He gives himself away—for example, the harshness of his fingers adjusting the strings on his racquet.

Neil has seen dozens of people don danger as an affectation to intimidate someone else—mostly him. Riko isn’t doing anything new or original; Neil’s very familiar with this casual lean and menace method. He thinks, actually, that Riko is trying to pull off the Andrew classic: calm, placid, the smooth surface not entirely disguising the capacity for violence bubbling just beneath the surface. 

It’s not working. 

Riko’s face is tight, the flatness of his lips giving away his anger. His fingers are jerkier on the strings than they should be. His body isn’t loose the way he probably thinks it is. His shoulders are dropped but tight, the fingers of his left hand gripping the racquet hard. 

Everyone thinks Andrew is out of control, but this is what that really looks like—the anger moving across Riko’s face foretelling a storm, the clear desire to lash out. 

“ _Does he really like you that much?_ ”

“Non,” Jean says, leaning a little harder into Neil’s side. He absently strokes his thumb over Neil’s knuckles and very pointedly does not look in Riko’s direction. “ _He likes winning that much_.”

Neil realizes he’s been looking at Riko for too long. It’s going to start seeming like a taunt if he doesn’t stop. He blinks his way out of his stare, shifts his gaze, and nods discreetly towards Allison and Seth. “ _Is it love or hate today?_ ”

“ _I think it is the same for them,_ ” Jean says. 

“ _What’s that like?_ ” Neil asks thoughtfully. He thinks about his mobster father and his terrified, defiant mother. He thinks about years on the run, driven relentlessly on a journey with no end by a mother who was all stick and no carrot. He amends his question. “ _Do you think they like it?_ ”

Jean looks towards them. In silence, they watch the push and pull of body language, the way Allison’s hand keeps flitting to her hair, the way Seth’s fingers grip the edges of the bleacher he’s straddling. Jean shakes his head. “ _I think maybe we’re all just trying to feel something._ ”

Startled by the sudden, shrill sound of a whistle, they both look back towards the practice area. Kevin has had enough—he waves everyone back onto the court. Jean lets go of Neil’s hand when they reach the bottom of the bleachers, jogging off to guard Andrew’s goal. Neil lifts it and stares at his palm, at the back of his fingers. He doesn’t mind the hand-holding, he finds. It’s kind of nice. A little awkward, but nice.

“Josten,” Kevin shouts. “If you’re done swooning, maybe we could play some exy.”

Neil spends the rest of practice running for balls Andrew throws too far and too hard for him to catch. His back hurts from stooping over to scoop them up. Any breaks he gets are punctuated by the sound of the ball slamming against some poor player’s pads. Renee’s smile has an amused edge to it every time she gets to the ball first and tosses it to him. Kevin, already frustrated by Neil’s futile attempts to keep the ball, stops practice and yells at Andrew about not breaking his teammates. Neil is usually very entertained by Andrew’s malicious aim, but he hasn’t had the chance to enjoy it this time. He’s spent too much of his time sprinting and failing to pay attention to that side of the court. When practice finally ends with Dan’s exhausted whistle, he tugs off his helmet and sprawls on the floor, forcing his breath into a steady rhythm and willing the pounding of his heart to calm. 

A shadow appears over him—when he squints up, he sees Allison, her hair tidier than usual, her mostly dry uniform, her extended hand. 

“I changed my mind,” she says, as she hauls him onto her feet. “Jean can have you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil chooses a seat. Practice gets crowded. Andrew watches a sunset.

_”Neil Josten and that hot French guy are totally dating.”_

_“I kind of thought they were all just openly fucking each other.”_

_“My friend was sitting behind them at lunch the other day and they were for real talking about having orgies.”_

_“Still, those are definitely not the two I would expect to be, like...a thing.”_

_“Why not?”_

_“It just seems like Neil spends a lot more time with Kevin and the twins.”_

_“With the evil twin.”_

_“You say that like the other one is a fucking marshmallow.”_

_“Fine, whatever. The evilest twin. But you’re right. They’re always creepily together and not talking to anyone else.”_

_“Jean’s a senior though. So is Kevin. And I heard Neil is emancipated. Maybe they get together a lot more outside of school? Maybe they have crazy sex parties at his apartment.”_

_“God, I wish one of those assholes had Snapchat.”_

The hands of the clock in Neil’s English class have no discernable rhythm. They do not move at all if someone is looking at them. It’s unnatural. The heartfelt recitation of Allen Ginsberg by an earnest woman in her late thirties wearing loud, thick glasses is powerful enough to shatter one’s belief in the concept of linear time. The true shape of time is cyclical. Time is a solar system without a sun. Existence is a planet that spends 80% of its orbit traveling between Monday at 2:36pm and Monday at 2:45pm. Eastern Standard Time.

The bell rings. Neil blinks the clock back into focus and sees the seconds hand tick over onto the eight. It’s been forty seconds fast as long as he’s been at this school.

He winds his way through the crowded hallways to meet Andrew and comes upon an unusual and unexpected combination of his friends and teammates: Andrew, Jeremy, Jean, Laila, and Katelyn. He comes to an abrupt halt at the little seating area they’ve claimed. Jeremy, Jean, and Laila are crowded onto a couch. Andrew is in one of the oversized armchairs and Katelyn is in the other. He feels a sudden sense of paralysis as he tries to figure out where he’s going to fit himself into this group. He could sit on the little coffee table, but he’d have to have his back to some of them. He could sit on the floor, but he’d have to pick his way through the feet and legs to find a spot. 

He’s frozen only for a moment, but they must sense his indecision. Jean settles back into the couch more and holds out a questioning hand, inviting Neil onto his lap. Neil looks from the couch to the chairs. Andrew quietly shifts himself all the way to one side and drapes his arm along the back to make more room. 

Relieved, Neil drops his backpack on the floor and wedges in next to Andrew. There’s just enough room; he props his feet up on the coffee table to keep their thighs from pressing together and slouches so that his shoulder can fit under Andrew’s arm instead of using it like a headrest. 

There’s a tiny moment of silence. Neil doesn’t realize it’s loaded until he looks up and sees that everyone is looking at him. 

“What?” he asks. 

“Uh, nothing,” Jeremy says brightly. He reaches over and pats Jean’s thigh. “What is everyone doing this weekend?” 

“Trig,” sighs Katelyn. “Or suicide. It could go either way.”

“I’m putting your ass in a car and driving to the beach,” Laila tells him cheerfully. “No, wait, actually, I’m putting mine and Sara’s asses in a car and you’re driving _us_ to the beach.”

“Hell yes. I’m in,” Jeremy says. His head swivels to include the rest of them. “You guys want to come?”

The beach. Neil could take it or leave it most days. The water is fun, but the sun and sand and memories are less so. He’s totally ambivalent this time, though, so he turns to Andrew for a verdict. Whatever he decides, Neil’s usually happy to go along with it. And Andrew is usually able to manage Kevin’s ridiculousness so that they don’t all spend the day running suicide sprints until they collapse.

When he looks at Andrew, though, he doesn’t get a microscopic nod or head shake or frown of denial or eye-roll of acceptance. Andrew looks back at him silently. There’s a glint in his eyes and the corner of his mouth is just barely quirking up in a fraction of a smile. Amused is not an answer.

Exasperated, Neil turns back to Jeremy and finds everyone watching him again. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ll let you know when I do?”

“Sure,” Jeremy says kindly. “We’ll ask the rest of the team, too.”

Neil feels a strange sense of disorientation, like he’s walking backwards on one of those people movers at the airport. Lost, he looks back to Andrew for a cue and gets only a raised eyebrow in response. He looks to Jean next, but he’s closed his eyes and is rubbing the smooth skin between his eyebrows.

___

On Tuesday, Riko walks into Neil as he, Andrew, Kevin, and Jean are leaving the locker room for practice. He makes a startled face like it’s an accident, but Neil doesn’t buy it.

“Neil,” Riko says. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Nope.

“Sure,” Neil says. “What do you need?”

Riko eyes the others significantly. “Alone.”

Andrew’s eyebrow goes up in the way it does when he’s almost astonished at someone’s daring. It’s a slightly different shape than it makes when he’s fully astonished at someone’s stupidity. Kevin glowers. Jean looks concerned. They are aware that Neil survived a lot worse than Riko for a lot longer, right? Just because he’s not entirely sure what size jeans he’s supposed to wear, that doesn’t mean he wanders helplessly around the world getting into strangers’ vans.

“Sure,” Neil says again, before anyone can start making a scene. “I’ll see you guys out there.”

He expects Riko’s smile to disappear when it’s just them but, to his great discomfort, it remains affixed. 

“Neil,” Riko says warmly. Neil isn’t sure Riko has ever actually used his first name before, now that he thinks about it. This is probably not a great sign.

“Riko,” Neil says warily. 

“I’ve been noticing you more lately.”

The first thing that washes over Neil is alarm. The second is tentative understanding: Riko is interested in Jean; Jean now spends a lot of time with Neil; in theoretically denying Riko what he wants, Neil has turned himself into a flashing green blip on Riko’s radar. Still, what he’d been expecting from Riko was pretty much anything other than this leaning and smiling thing he’s doing. Neil steels himself to deflect a blow from a hidden weapon.

“Why are you doing that?” he asks bluntly. 

Riko’s smile holds, but his eyes narrow a little. It gives his face a ghoulish shape. 

“Your playing has really improved,” Riko answers smoothly. “You’ve progressed to a level I can work with.”

“Oh,” Neil says, relaxing. “No thank you.”

“I didn’t mention it in front of the others,” Riko continues, “because other than Kevin, none of them are there yet. I didn’t want them to feel bad.” 

Neil almost laughs. Making people feel bad is Riko’s best-honed skill. “Really,” he says, clearing his throat to grind the laugh out of existence. “Just keep ignoring me.”

Riko’s smile finally slips. “You must not understand what I’m offering you.”

“Probably not,” Neil agrees. “We’re going to be late.”

With that, he offers Riko a brief, false smile and pushes past him and out of the locker room, almost stumbling in his haste as he emerges into the small thicket of players clustered around the bench. Neil slides in behind Matt so that Wymack won’t notice that they’ve missed the first half of his speech. He can’t feel the shadow of Riko stretching over his shoulder, so he figures Riko has either decided to skip this or has worked his way in at a different point. Either way, Neil slides in between Matt and Seth, angling through the slim gap between them and finding himself to Kevin’s right; Kevin is raptly attentive to whatever his father is lecturing them about, so it takes him a couple of glances to his side to realize Neil’s arrived. 

“Wait with me,” Kevin hisses. “He’s almost done.”

Neil’s attention has drifted to the small cluster of non-athletes who have set up camp high in the bleachers. They’re not doing anything interesting, but Neil phases out Wymack’s voice in favor of analyzing the tiniest of their movements. Coach may or may not be saying something interesting; he’s sure he’ll hear about it from Kevin if it’s important. Wymack finally wraps it up with a, “So, try not to bleed on the court. I’ll never hear the end of it from Mr. Blair.”

The others start to trudge onto the court, but Kevin drags Neil halfway down the bleachers and leans in to hiss at him again. “What did he want?”

“Riko?”

Kevin’s response is a look so despairing that Neil worries he’s actually broken him this time. 

“I don’t know,” Neil says. “I have no idea.”

This is a little bit of a lie. He knows what Riko wants: Jean. He just isn’t sure what this wholly unsolicited niceness has to do with that.

“What did he _say_?” Kevin asks. 

Neil sighs. “He said I was getting better. And that he’d noticed.”

“You’re getting better because of _me_ ,” Kevin snaps. “Without me you’re an unformed blob of chaos.”

“Thanks,” Neil says drily. 

“That’s all he said?” Kevin demands. “What were his exact words?”

“I’ve progressed to a level he can work with.”

“Bullshit,” Kevin says. “That’s the last thing he’d want.”

Neil looks longingly towards the court. Everyone else is out there, stretching and starting their laps. It’s so close—and yet, so far away. So Riko is a pushy asshole. That shouldn’t be news to Kevin. 

“I don’t know,” Neil sighs. “He seemed very sincere. I don’t get what your problem is with him.”

Kevin’s jaw drops and then rebounds into a set tightness. “You’re being difficult.”

“Sure,” Neil says. “It’s definitely me. Can we go to practice so you can bitch at me about something less pointless?”

He’s definitely going to pay for that, he thinks, glumly, as Kevin visibly dons the role of taskmaster. He wears it like a mantle; his shoulders straighten to support its weight.

But Kevin doesn’t get a chance to relentlessly reshape any of Neil’s game. He spends too much time racing Riko towards balls that Andrew sends as far away from them as possible. It could be an accident, maybe—except that Neil is the only one of them who catches a ball. He catches six, to be exact. The closest Kevin or Riko get is a short, wild swipe that sends it ricocheting off the ceiling.

Whatever Andrew is taking out on Riko and Kevin, it has them both saturated and panting by the time they break halfway through the scrimmage. They’re both trying to look unaffected, but the rapid rise-and-fall of their chests, the dry wheezing noise their breath makes, and the constant drip-drip-drip of sweat into their eyes is a dead giveaway. In the goal, Andrew props his racquet up in front of him and watches them walk in straight, very deliberate lines off the court. 

Neil takes off his helmet and jogs a few steps towards Andrew, but he’s stopped by Jean’s hand on his upper arm. “Mon lapin,” he says quietly. “What did they want?”

“They?” Neil asks. 

“ _Their highnesses_.”

Oh, right. “Nothing,” Neil says. “I don’t know.”

“It could not have been nothing.”

“You know Riko. Sometimes he just talks.”

“No,” Jean says, frowning. “He does not. He does not engage in mindless chit-chat.”

“He offered me lessons, I don’t know why. I said no.”

The faint spots of color on Jean’s cheeks seem to be more about the blanching of his skin than the flushing of it. 

“I said _no thank you_ ,” Neil revises helpfully. “I don’t know what he actually wanted, but I declined, and now I’d really like to go drink some water.”

“And the other?”

“Wanted to know what Riko wanted. Is this really more important than the break?”

Jean frowns, but ultimately relents. “We can talk more later.”

“Great,” Neil says. “I can’t wait.”

He ends up with barely enough time to wipe off his face, slam down his water, and get his helmet back on, and then they’re starting again. He needn’t have worried about slaking his thirst—he doesn’t see the ball again for the rest of practice. It finds its way into Riko’s net over and over again, sending him colliding with an unusually determined Jean time after time. 

Whatever the fuck Andrew is doing, Neil hopes it’s entertaining him, because it’s incredibly boring at this end of the court. 

When Wymack blows the whistle a whole ten minutes early, Neil crosses the short distance between himself and Renee’s goal before anyone can intercept him. 

“Quite a practice,” Renee says. “Andrew seemed to have a strategy.”

“You know,” Neil complains, “he has so much talent. If he thought winning was half as much fun as entertaining himself, he’d get scouted by every college in the country.”

“Of course,” Renee agrees serenely. “Andrew’s motivations are complex. I don’t imagine that athletic fame occupies much space on the list.”

“If achieving athletic fame would irritate Kevin, I think it would move pretty close to the top.”

“Probably,” Renee allows. “And if anyone could arrange that, I have faith that it would be you.”

Neil is still pondering the possibilities opened by this conversation when he trails Renee to a stop and realizes his face is about four inches from Andrew’s racquet. He blinks to clear the fine detail of the strings from his eyes and turns to see that Renee is already walking away. 

“You’re popular today,” Andrew observes. 

“Fuck,” Neil says. “Not you, too.”

“Humor me.”

Neil props his racket on the ground and says, resignedly, “Riko wanted to talk to me about Exy. Kevin wanted to know what Riko wanted, and Jean wanted to know what Kevin and Riko wanted. And now I’m here, telling you about all three of them.”

“Did that story work on any of them?” Andrew asks mildly. 

“It’s the whole story,” Neil protests. 

Andrew hums and shifts his weight so that he can tug his helmet off with his free hand. Neil feels the sweat trickle down his back as Andrew, movements easy and unconcerned, hands Neil his helmet and pushes his sweaty hair out of his face. 

Neil waits for the axe to fall.

“So,” Andrew hums. “Riko held you back to giggle about the cutest professional Exy players, Kevin was mildly interested, Jean asked to be polite, and all of this is as according to everyone’s habits and sounds no alarms at all.”

Which is—okay, fair enough. And yet. “I don’t know,” Neil says for about the fiftieth time in the last hour. “I don’t know what Riko is up to. I don’t know why Kevin is so worked up about it. And Jean—” he stops and shakes his head. “Jean is maybe as confused as I am.”

“I doubt that,” Andrew says thoughtfully. “But I do believe that you know nothing.”

“Thank you,” Neil says, relieved. But then, wait— ”Hey,” he protests. “I know stuff.”

“Do you?” Andrew asks. “Prove it.”

___

Thursday’s extra practice is somehow worse.

They don’t even really have to be there. The whole team meets for practice during the last period on Mondays and Wednesdays, breaking at the final bell only to come back for another hour and a half. 

Tuesday and Thursday, it’s optional. Neil says ‘optional’, but he thinks even Dan would call it ‘excessive.’ Regardless, it’s consistently been Neil and Kevin. It’s usually Neil, Kevin, and Andrew. They rarely have a fourth. They’ve never had a fifth. 

Until today. Neil is geared up and ready to go, but instead of turning on electric cattle prod mode and barking orders at Neil, like he usually does, Kevin is standing three feet into the court and staring in surprise at Jean and Riko, who are leaning on the wall across the court and pretending like all of this is normal. 

“Why are you here?” Kevin asks. 

“You carry too much of the load,” Riko says. “You should let me take these over for a while.”

Kevin’s brow scrunches in confusion. His hand is rhythmically loosening and tightening on the shaft of his racquet. Neil never thought he would say this, but: he actually prefers asshole-coach Kevin to pandering-to-Riko Kevin. 

“Why would I do that?” Kevin asks. 

“To rest,” Riko suggests. 

“Why would I rather rest than practice?”

Riko’s smile blossoms on his face and then freezes in place. His high cheekbones are cut marble. His very shiny black hair is pulled back into a small bun. He should be beautiful. He gives Neil the fucking creeps. Riko had put Neil on high alert since the first time they met; the intensity of his reaction had faded, but this new level of attention is ramping it back up again. 

“Very well,” Riko says. “I will help. I didn’t want to have to say it, but I think Neil may have gone as far as he can with you.”

Kevin’s hand clenches around his stick, but other than that, Neil thinks he covers his anger pretty well. “What about you?” he snaps at Jean. 

Jean offers a tight smile. It is much smaller and yet much more real than Riko’s. He clears his throat and says, “It’s important to Neil,” in a light tone that fizzles out against the tension in the room. 

Neil hears a quiet snort from behind him and turns, surprised to see that Andrew has actually ventured onto the court to see what all the drama is about. This must have been going on longer than he realized.

“Are you coming to play?” Neil asks. “Does having twice as many egos to crush make it fun enough for you?”

“You’re not funny,” Andrew says absently, though he does step forward to Neil’s side. Most of his attention is taken up with the weird, overly friendly pissing contest the seniors have drifted into. Neil follows his eyes and tries to see what he sees. Jean is mostly silent. He’s drawn himself up into his boarding school posture; he smiles and nods at what appear to be random intervals. Kevin and Riko are tersely trying to out-cooperate each other. Occasionally, the name of a play or drill drifts across the court clearly enough for him to hear it.

“Why are they here?” Neil asks. Riko practically hired a town crier to let everyone know he wasn’t so untalented and pathetic as to need _extra practice_. The idea that he’d be there to help literally any of them is laughable. Jean’s excuse is total bullshit; Neil supposes it sells the couple thing a little more, but this seems like a ridiculously inefficient way to accomplish that goal. Dropping ‘I was with Neil at extra practice’ into casual conversation doesn’t seem worth all of this. Surely they could have had a fake movie night and achieved better results and more innuendo. 

“Didn’t you hear them?” Andrew asks mildly. 

“I heard them lie,” Neil says. He switches to German, even though he doesn’t think anyone is listening to them. “ _Maybe the bastard is here to break Kevin’s leg with fewer witnesses._ ”

“ _He knew I’d be here_ ,” Andrew says dismissively. 

Neil takes that for the hard denial he knows it to be. He turns back to Jean, Riko, and Kevin, who appear to be playing some kind of game where the most accommodating person wins. He’s never seen Riko smile for this long before. Him and Kevin both, teeth exposed, lips a little too tight to be believable. 

“Ugh.” Neil looks at the door behind them. Chances of them being able to sneak out and leave before the other guys realize? He calculates a solid 40% and then he hears his name called in a horrendous mess that sounds (because it is) unpleasantly like three guys saying the same thing not _quite_ in unison. He jerks his head up and sees that all three of them are looking at him now. All three of them look thrilled that he’s there.

Maybe he should just turn and run. He’s faster than any of them if he really puts in the effort, and he’d even have the element of surprise. He could probably be halfway home before anyone figured out what he was doing. One problem: his car and house keys are in his locker. 

He hears a rustle beside him and watches as Andrew turns to go. He hangs back long enough to lightly tap his fingers against Neil’s uncovered forearm and smirk at him. “Have fun.” 

Neil steels his shoulders, improves his grip on the chin strap of his helmet, and jogs towards the center of the court. What’s that prayer? Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. He doesn’t finish it—it would make the sprinting off into the sunset option seem a lot more reasonable. 

It’s so much more exhausting than he could have imagined. Everyone is so competitive that Neil can only assume they think they’re about to make the Olympic team. Worse, Jean being there means that whenever Kevin and Neil call out to each other in French, Riko is the only one who can’t understand. It’s never been a big deal in an actual game, but with just the four of them here, it becomes painfully obvious. They try to stick to English, but Jean keeps calling out praise and endearments in French to antagonize Riko and instead of getting mad and loud about it, Riko doubles down on his weird, helpful, attentive bullshit. It’s terrible. Neil would vastly prefer his usual arrogant sniping and dirty tricks with his racquet. 

By the time Andrew parks in front of Neil’s apartment, Neil is so tired he’s strongly considering passing out face-first on his couch and sleeping through until Monday. 

Andrew shoves his door open before he takes the keys out of the ignition. Neil turns towards him and the dinging noise to see Andrew watching him intently. 

“They’re ruining Exy,” Neil says. 

“It must be easy to have your priorities straight when there’s only one of them.”

“Hey,” Neil protests. He lifts one tired finger and pokes Andrew in the arm with it. “I have more than one.”

Andrew eyes him skeptically. “You can’t just divide Exy into smaller categories.”

“There’s Kevin,” Neil argues. “Staying alive. Not failing now that my transcripts are real. You.”

The look Andrew gives him is flatly unimpressed by this off list. “Are you going to pass out if I let you come to the lake with me?”

“No,” Neil says quickly, straightening and trying to keep the sudden eagerness from his voice. “I’m good.”

Andrew nods towards the trunk and finally yanks the keys out of the ignition. “Get your helmet.”

Neil hastily shoves everything he was going to take inside into the trunk instead, grabbing the navy helmet—the opposite of orange, apparently—that Andrew had bought him before slamming the trunk shut. Andrew is already on the bike and kicking the stand up when Neil clicks the helmet strap into place and steps up to let Andrew check the fit. 

They take the car most places. Stuart had bought him the brand-new, innocuous Kia shortly after Neil was legally emancipated, but Neil hadn’t been able to bring himself to drive it for some reason he couldn’t even articulate to himself. He’d known Andrew for about three weeks before he’d held his hand out for Neil’s keys and started driving his little pack everywhere. 

Andrew had told Neil once that he’d picked the motorcycle instead of a car because it meant he wouldn’t have to give other people rides. By the end of spring break, though, their school week routine had been set in stone: Andrew shows up at Neil’s apartment in the morning, parks the bike there, then drives Neil and the Kia to pick up Kevin. 

But Andrew allows so few people on the bike in general that Neil always jumps at the chance. 

He pulls on the gloves Andrew gives him, swings his leg over the bike, props his foot up on the peg, and holds his hands out for Andrew to pull into place when he’s ready for them.

Nothing in Neil’s life has ever been easier than this. The bike rumbles between his thighs, the exhaust floods his senses, and once he’s holding on to Andrew, he can let go of everything else. He feels untouchable when they do this, like they’ve somehow stepped outside of everyone else’s reality and are just slipping through the gaps and cracks. In these moments, Andrew is completely in control of the world—Neil just has to hold on and move with him. Everything else is a blur. It’s just the press of wind forming itself around them, the warmth of Andrew’s back, and the gentle roar of the engine. 

By the time they get to the lake Andrew likes—about twenty minutes later—Neil’s limbs are loose and buzzing. He feels whipped clean by the battering of air. He climbs somewhat less than gracefully off the bike and hands Andrew his helmet to hook onto the bike. The sun is already starting to set, but they pick their way through the trees and flop in their favorite spot in time to watch the first tendrils of lavender wash across the sky. 

Neil leans his weight back against his palms and watches as Andrew digs out a carton of cigarettes and a lighter. “Does Kevin know yet?”

Andrew levels a censuring look his way and taps out a cigarette. 

“I won’t tell him,” Neil says. 

“I’m not afraid of Kevin.”

“Oh,” Neil says. “Then I guess I will tell him.”

Andrew’s mouth tips up just enough for Neil to see in the dimming light. “I’ll kill you.” 

“You’re going to do that anyway,” Neil points out. “And then where will you be?”

“In peace.”

“Overrated,” Neil says. “You’d get bored.”

“I’m bored now,” Andrew says pointedly. 

He’s so full of shit. Neil smiles fondly as Andrew resolutely ignores him and sucks down a first drag of the cigarette. “Did Nicky tell you what he had planned for Sunday?” 

“Motocross,” Andrew says disparagingly. 

Neil isn’t fooled. If Andrew didn’t want to go, Andrew wouldn’t go. He watches Andrew’s thumb moving over the spark wheel and tries to visualize the Hemmick-Minyards on a dirtbike track. Nicky’s enthusiasm, Andrew’s confrontational defiance, Aaron’s raw aggression unleashed. “It sounds like fun,” Neil says. 

He smiles again when Andrew flicks his eyes disapprovingly in Neil’s direction. He’s not going to push it—he doesn’t want to make Andrew self-consciously refuse to enjoy the experience just to prove Neil wrong. Despite popular belief, Andrew is capable of having fun. Andrew _is_ fun. Andrew is smart and biting and hilarious. He's also going to be hell to go up against on that track. A pang of disappointment rings in Neil’s chest that he won’t be there to see it. Instead, he’ll be at the beach, trying to fulfill Kevin’s expectations of professional-level volleyball and dodging any attempts to rope the team into burpees.

He doesn’t realize he’s staring absently at Andrew’s profile until he feels a hand push his face away, towards the lake. 

“Stop staring,” Andrew says. “Watch the fucking sunset.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have only just begun to make Neil Josten's life hard.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kevin needs help carrying stuff. Jean is vigilant about UV rays. Neil asks a question.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I'm weak. 
> 
> This chapter brought to you almost entirely by Taylor Swift's _Folklore_ album.
> 
> Fair warning that I beta'd and edited this one all by my lonesome.

_”Okay, but the important question is whether or not Reynolds is single.”_

_“You want a girlfriend you call by her last name?”_

_“Uh, no shit, yes. She’s a badass. She could rip my head off after sex and I’d thank her.”_

_“Gordon would probably rip your head off himself if he heard your JV ass talking like this.”_

_“Can you imagine if the football team was co-ed? We’d never get anything done.”_

_“You guys are being gross.”_

_“Oh, come on, babe, don’t be like that.”_

_“Be like what? Calling you on your bullshit? This is why most of the girls think the Exy team is hotter than the football team, you know? You guys still see us as objects. They just treat people like people. Well, most of them.”_

_“Most of them?”_

_“I mean, some of them are definitely assholes. But they’re not_ sexist _assholes.”_

Friday officially flips over into Saturday. Neil had been hoping the glowing digits on the clock would motivate him to get up and throw away the remnants of their second round of dinosaur chicken nuggets, but the blocky green 12:00 confers no new energy upon him. He remains slumped on his couch with his feet up on the tufted sage ottoman Andrew had made him buy to replace the flimsy glass and metal table he’d had before. 

Instead of getting up, he lets his head fall to the side and watches Andrew’s profile, lit by the glowing, dancing colors of the TV. “Are you staying?” 

Andrew glances over. His features are softened by the dim light and the lateness of the hour. His eyelids are heavy. This is one of Neil’s favorite versions of Andrew—truly relaxed, knives off, body loose and draped on the furniture. He’s not sure how many people have seen this, so he is very careful to appreciate it. He hadn’t gotten it easily. He’d earned it over hours of sitting together behind locked doors. Hours of reaching into each other and pulling out razor blades. It’s the most valuable thing he’s ever had, even in this bizarre new life. 

“No,” Andrew says, though his eyes are considering. 

Neil checks the clock again. 12:02. “Take the car,” he says. “It’s too dark.” 

“The bike has lights,” Andrew says drily. “It’s visible.”

“Is it more visible than other drivers are dumb or drunk?” 

Andrew shrugs. It’s the only agreement Neil’s going to get, but he’ll take it.

Reluctantly, he pulls his still-sore legs off the ottoman and stands, grabbing plates and cups as he goes. He haphazardly shoves it all into a dishwasher that may or may not be full of clean dishes. Neil figures they can only get cleaner if they go through the cycle a couple of extra times, right?

He’s just pushed the correct combinations of buttons and slammed the door closed when he hears ringing. He looks up to see Andrew crossing to the kitchen and sliding Neil’s phone across the counter towards him. It buzzes aggressively, the buttons on the screen demanding attention. 

“Your boyfriend,” Andrew observes, even though Neil can read Jean’s name right on the screen himself.

He doesn’t hesitate to send it to voicemail. It’s late. He could be sleeping. He probably should be sleeping, actually. And there is no possible way he’s the guy Jean calls for emergencies on weeknights. If he’s dipping that low in the barrel, he should probably just call the cops. It’s probably just beach plans. He’ll leave a voicemail.

Andrew pushes the phone away and steps forward slowly. He is always so precisely aware of his body and the space around it that the closeness cannot be an accident. Andrew is just...right there. One of his socked feet slips in between Neil’s. When Neil looks back up, Andrew is near enough that Neil can count each individual eyelash. 

He tries to keep his gaze steady while Andrew searches his eyes. For some reason he can’t explain, he holds his breath. His heart pounds a little faster. He’s toeing the edge of a chasm. 

“I don’t think he’s doing it right,” Andrew says. It’s a little lower pitched than his insults usually are. Rougher. Maybe pensive. 

Neil keeps his hands safely on the counter behind him. Andrew’s bubble has either expanded to fit Neil inside or reduced itself to scant inches, but either way, Neil’s not going to accidentally cross any boundaries here. 

Anyway, he might need the stability to keep his shit together. Andrew is suddenly this wave of sensory input: the warmth of his body, the vaguely woodsy scent that always lingers around him. Neil can hear Andrew’s breath, feeling it in light brushes against his skin. He leans instinctively closer.

And then Andrew’s hands are on his face, warm and gentle, and their mouths are together and Neil feels a spike of heat in his gut that he didn’t even know was possible. 

His breath catches in surprise. He tightens his grip on the counter and leans into Andrew’s chest, enthralled by the slide of fingers deeper into his hair, the planes of muscle pressed against him, the sublime everythingness of Andrew. His mouth is hot and demanding and Neil thinks maybe he’s not so much kissing Andrew back as he is desperately trying to catch up to him so he can share some of this buoyant euphoria that’s racing through his veins.

Too soon, Andrew’s hands tighten on Neil’s head, holding him still. Andrew pulls a breath away but doesn’t step back yet. All Neil can think about is having more of this, having all of this; that rush of wanting wars with the silent metronome of _don’t touch, don’t touch_ keeping time in his head. He grips the counter, just in case. Andrew kisses him again, softly, lingering at it to brush his thumbs over Neil’s cheekbones. 

And then he’s gone, stepping back, somehow collected and upright and acting like he still understands how to exist in this world. Maybe he does. He remembers what Andrew had said before— _I don’t think he’s doing it right_. Neil’s mind gropes for understanding and comes to the most accurate conclusion possible: he has no fucking idea what’s going on. Maybe Andrew is proving a point. Maybe he’s trying to one-up Jean. Maybe it’s one of the Foxes’ endless bets. Maybe it’s not Andrew at all and Aaron got _really_ good at impersonating him and is doing this to fuck with Neil.

Neil is still reeling through a dizzying array of possibilities when Andrew moves casually to the little table in the entryway. He already has the second key to Neil’s car on his ring, but he unclips his motorcycle keys and tosses them towards Neil. “Emergencies only. It’s too dark.”

Neil stares at the little pile of metal in his hand, trying to reconcile the mundane dullness of their surface with the incredibleness of whatever the fuck just happened. His hands are still steady. That’s something. Maybe he won’t completely embarrass himself tonight. 

Andrew is already to the front door, where he braces against the wall to shove his feet into his shoes. He’s all Neil can look at, but Neil might as well be the ceiling for how much attention Andrew is paying to him. Neil watches dumbly until the shoes are on and then looks up to see Andrew tossing and catching the keys in his right hand. He’s waiting for something. Neil just doesn’t know what it is. 

“Andrew,” Neil says. “Was that—“

“Nothing. A bad idea,” Andrew says evenly. 

Neil frowns. His head is foggy. He wants Andrew’s hands on him again. “Who?” he asks. “Is doing what wrong?”

Andrew shrugs one shoulder carelessly. “You didn’t take his call.”

Neil is still staring stupidly at him when he opens the door and steps through it. Andrew pauses just long enough to rap his knuckles beneath the security chain as a reminder, and then he’s really gone, his footsteps thudding rapidly and rhythmically down the stairs. The sound of Neil’s car starting seeps through his windows before he’s even moved to lock the door.

___

Neil turns up at Kevin’s house early Sunday morning with a towel and a bottle of water tossed in the trunk of his otherwise empty car. He pulls into the driveway behind Wymack’s light green minivan, braces himself for a day of socializing, and climbs out of the driver’s seat.

The path to Kevin’s front door is well-trod and Neil’s feet find their way through the dew-damp grass despite the lingering gloom of the early hour. He makes it about halfway before the door opens and Jean jogs out to meet him. 

“Hey,” Jean says. Neil leans into him for the now customary hug he gets every time they meet up. He thought he’d mind this part of the whole thing, but he doesn’t. Jean is tall and very strong and his arms are warm and his scent always makes Neil crave a good coffee and bread. He feels Jean’s words rumble through his chest when he says, “Thank you for coming.” 

Neil thinks about telling Jean that he might need to leave earlier than the others, that his relationship with beaches is a little fraught, that he hasn’t even really done that much swimming and very well might end the day curled in the fetal position or dead. 

“It might—” Neil starts, but his thought is cut off when Jean steps back enough to put his hands on Neil’s shoulders and smiles wryly at him. 

“Don’t worry,” Jean says. “I’ve been given very clear instructions.”

“What? By who?”

“Andrew.” Jean shakes his head. “I told him I thought he could survive a day without you and the look in his eyes was terrifying. I do not want to add flame to that fire.”

“He’s not going to _kill you_ ,” Neil protests, exasperated. “He’d just cut you a little, maybe.”

Jean’s eyebrow goes up. 

“Which I could also do,” Neil reminds him. 

Jean sighs. “It was a short list. Make sure your phone is charged. Don’t let you wander off.” 

Neil knows that Andrew must have reservations about this trip. He hadn’t been able to come; Nicky had already planned some kind of family thing that no one could get out of. Neil privately thinks that neither of the twins actually wanted out of it anyway. They all hold onto each other too tightly for a family that doesn’t care about being together. Still, he imagines that sending Kevin and Neil off with the rest of the team must put Andrew at least a little on edge. He doesn’t exactly trust either of them to take care of themselves. He might trust Neil to look after Kevin and Kevin to look after Neil, but there’s a very good chance that Andrew thinks they’d both wander out into traffic if left to look after themselves. 

“He has a strange thing about you,” Jean says. Neil blinks him back into focus and tries to read the expression on his face. “I don’t think I understand it.” 

“Remember when you said Andrew doesn’t care about other people?” Neil asks. Jean nods. Neil raises a shoulder apathetically, but he knows the shadow of his voice will be chastising. “You were wrong.”

Behind them, the front door is flung open a little too hard—Kevin struggles through it with what seems like an apartment’s worth of shit. “Are you just going to stand there?” Kevin asks. “Or are you going to get off your lazy asses and help me?”

Neil is overwhelmingly tempted to sit right down on the grass and pretend to be fascinated by the process of loading Kevin’s shit into the car. Instead, he tags along behind Jean and tries to figure out what he could possibly be bringing with them that would require this much effort. 

“What is all of this?” Neil asks. “We aren’t moving there, are we?”

Kevin shoves a few things his way, transferring them so carelessly that Neil almost drops the whole lot. Would it matter? Is any of this fragile? What’s in these six small, nearly-identical canvas bags? 

“Beach chairs,” Kevin says, nodding towards the chaotic stack of clattering, zippered pouches in Neil’s arms. “Two canopy tents. Umbrellas. Drinks and snacks, alcohol, a volleyball and net, a couple of frisbees, beach towels, regular towels, sunglasses, a change of clothes, and sunscreen. A lot of sunscreen.” He pauses and eyes Neil critically. “For you. You can’t play if you have third degree burns. What did _you_ bring?”

“Um,” Neil says, sheepishly. The last time he was at a beach, all he needed was gasoline and a match. “A towel and a bottle of water?”

“Why are you like this?” Kevin asks. “How are you still alive?”

“The company of good friends,” Jean interjects smoothly. “Let’s load these things in the car. When we arrive, I promise to monitor Neil’s skin very closely.” 

Great, exactly what he needs. A _third_ guy to supervise him. Or maybe it is what he needs. It seems like, lately, the more people he accepts supervision from, the better his life gets. Matt and Dan had driven him the hour and a half to the Charlotte Ikea and helped him pick out and haul back a bunch of stuff that they claimed was essential to ‘making a house a home.’ Neil had thought he was doing fine with his two plates, two glasses, and one towel, but in hindsight, it had maybe been a bit spartan. The decorative pillows and tiny blankets Allison had pressed upon him seemed useless, but actually made his catalogue furniture sets seem less soulless. Kevin has been great for his game. Andrew has been everything else. His presence in Neil’s life is infinitely precious. He was a fixed point when Neil desperately needed one. He’s never flinched away from Neil’s shitty past. 

If letting Jean nag him about sunscreen follows the trend, Neil might as well let it happen. 

They fill the two hours of drive time to Folly Beach with Exy, mostly. That, and Jean making sure Neil’s phone stays plugged in and charging. The three of them could spend hours talking about the finer points of the sport, analyzing other teams’ performances, lamenting Andrew’s squandering of his talent, comparing college rankings, and arguing over who is the best pro player in every position, so—they do. That, and the low throb of a playlist Jeremy had made for the team, turns the span of the journey into a blink. 

They’re the first ones there, because of course they are, because Kevin Day. Neil puts his foot down after the third parking area Kevin makes him try in search of the perfect spot, but still has to drive back to the first they’d visited after Kevin declares it to be the best option of the narrow range Neil’s obstinance allowed them; then he loads Neil and Jean up with bags and chairs, hefts the full cooler onto his shoulder, and wanders about the length of a football field before he decides he has found the right spot—it’s twenty yards back the way they came. 

Under Kevin’s supervision, Neil and Jean assemble the pop up tents side-by-side; 200 square feet of shade that seems gratuitous at 8:45 in the morning, but which even Neil realizes will be a godsend by noon. They’re just staking the last one down when Allison, Seth, Matt, and Dan turn up. They’re carrying about as much shit as Kevin brought, which seems impossible. What about their current set-up could possibly be incomplete?

Neil is starting to think he’s never actually gone to the beach before. 

Everyone works to the white noise of the waves and the whispers of an early breeze. They spread out some kind of massive tarps on the ground that Allison insists will stay sand-free by virtue of special mesh fabric, set both coolers down to anchor the fabric better, and start fussing over other shit. Neil mostly just stands there while Kevin and Dan decide how to arrange what has now become ten folding chairs, until Allison recruits him to help her hang solar-powered lights around the edges of the tent. 

“Um,” Neil says. He’s obediently holding the clips, passing them to her one-by-one as they work their way around the perimeter. “What’s the point of these?”

“The point?” Allison has to mumble around the cord, which she’s holding gently in her mouth, but she still sounds fondly exasperated. “It looks good.” 

Neil skeptically examines the long strands of star-shaped lights. “But it’s daytime.” 

“For now,” Allison says breezily. She affixes another clip and admires her work. “It’ll get dark later and we’ll be glad to have these.”

“We’re staying until dark?”

“Neil, darling boy. Jeremy is bringing a grill. We have enough supplies to camp here for three days, if we want. We will definitely stay until dark.”

“What if it rains?”

Allison shudders. Before she can scold him for jinxing them, Kevin calls Neil’s name impatiently. “Back off, Day,” Allison shouts back. “He’s mine right now.” 

Kevin’s muttered disapproval of needing two people for this job is loud enough that they can hear it from the other side. Not really muttering, then.

Neil does have to admire the final product. They all stand back, about ten feet from their tents, and survey the whole set-up. There’s a chaotic energy to the mixed chairs and piles of towels and rows of coolers. Jeremy’s grill is under its own beach umbrella. There are no consistent color schemes, several different types of folding chairs, and a heap of now empty bags held down by an extra case of water. Alvarez bought a pop-up laundry hamper and crammed all of the unused towels into it. 

It seems like an incredible amount of work for one afternoon. Or maybe that’s the appeal of the thing—the moment is ephemeral but the memory lasts. At the very least, Neil is never going to forget this bizarre short-term occupation. The feel of the sand under his feet, the morning sun warming his back, the exhilarating freshness of the air. He can feel it all taking up residence in his bones.

He pulls his phone out and gets a picture of their work right before a bunch of the others show up—Katelyn, Renee, a handful of the older sophomores who could wrangle a ride. 

He sends the photo to Andrew and watches his screen until he gets a reply: _turn around dumbass_.

Grinning, he turns and takes a picture of the beach, the water swirling white at the peaks of the modest waves. He knows he’s not going to get a response this time, so he shoves his phone into his pocket and allows himself to be pulled into the tent and very, very thoroughly rubbed down with sunscreen. He sits, knees held to his chest to hide his scars, and stares at the water until he’s lulled into his own thoughts by the firm stroke of Jean’s hands, the heavy scent of ozone, and the curl and crash of the ocean’s stalwart efforts to conquer the land. He thinks about his mother, wondering whether or not she would have allowed them to stay in one place after his father died. He thinks about the random good fortune of landing in this place with these people. He thinks about Andrew’s hands on his face and the normal, unaffected texts they’ve exchanged since Friday night. 

He’s startled back to the present by a piercing shriek coming from the water. Matt, by the sound of it; Dan’s wicked cackle follows it and Neil spots them in the water—Matt is trying not particularly hard to fight off Dan’s attempts to dunk him. 

Other groups are starting to show up now, filling in some of the blank space. Kevin insisted that they set up the volleyball area to keep people away from them; Neil’s not sure any of them are desperate to be neighbors with a group of nearly twenty high school students, but he had gotten up and allowed Kevin to direct him until the net was set up as straight and level as possible. It does ensure that they won’t be crowded, which Neil appreciates. It’s too easy to blend inconspicuously in this kind of setting.

Jean’s hands finally come to a stop on Neil’s shoulders. He taps his thumbs on either side of Neil’s spine and makes a thoughtful noise that is so very French it always makes Neil feel a sharp stab of nostalgia.

“What are you thinking?” Jean asks.

Neil shrugs, dislodging Jean’s hands in the process. “I don’t know,” Neil admits. “Memories, I guess.”

Jean settles next to him on the ground and averts his eyes while Neil pulls his anti-sun shirt back on. Jean has this remarkable tone of voice he uses sometimes sometimes, exactly halfway between measured and light. Neil thinks he’d make a fantastic therapist. Or hostage negotiator. Jean uses it to ask, “You have memories here?”

Neil considers this question very carefully. Only Andrew knows Neil’s entire story—and he’d like to keep it that way—but he is already keeping a secret _for_ Jean, so he feels reasonably confident in sharing one with him. And it might not be a bad idea to have someone partially clued-in if Neil loses his shit at some point. He doesn’t think he will, but he has no idea what might set him off here; he might just get maudlin and insist on telling everyone super depressing stories. 

“Not here,” Neil says neutrally. “But my mother and I were at the beach when she died. There’s a chance I could lose it, I guess.”

For a long moment, the only sounds are the waves and the shouts and laughter of the other foxes within them. Eventually, Jean says, “Minyard knows.”

Neil nods. 

Matt shrieks again, a high, shrill noise that quickly turns into laughter. 

“Okay,” Jean says after a long pause. “Let’s go join the Americans.”

By the time Jean pulls him back to the tent to apply a fresh coat of sunscreen, Renee has destroyed everyone at chicken fights at least twice. Neil has served as a projectile in the other guys’ competition to see who can throw a person highest and furthest, came in second-to-last in a breath-holding competition, and spent a while holding Allison up while she wrapped around him like a koala, as well as a very unsuccessful few seconds of trying to hold Matt the same way.

It’s kind of great. He expects that most of the shine will wear off for him hours before the others, but being a part of something like this, having a place among these people, still feels like an impossible joy; he’s torn between relaxing and enjoying it and remaining ever vigilant to anything that might threaten it.

He collapses into the low beach chair next to Kevin and digs his cell phone out of his bag while Jeremy gets the grill started. He has a message from Andrew—a picture of the motocross track Nicky had taken them to. It’s a great idea, letting the Minyard twins work out some of their aggression on a track instead of on a person. He pities the people who go up against them.

He types, quickly, _I won’t be paying your bail if you murder someone for getting in your way_.

Andrew must be on a break, because his answer comes through almost immediately: _yes you will_.

The rest of the day passes in a blur of heat and volleyball and tres leches cake and trips back into the water to cool off and battle the waves. His energy sapped by crowds and the heat, Neil actually manages to fall asleep in his chair. Jean has tangled their fingers together on the ground between them; that tether is somehow enough for Neil to briefly doze off, lulled to sleep by the quiet conversation between Jean and Jeremy that whispers its way over his head.

It’s almost 11pm by the time Neil drops Kevin off, helps him unload, and pours himself back into the car to drive the fifteen minutes home. About a minute and a half into that trip, his phone lights up with Andrew’s name. 

“Hey,” Neil says. “We’re back.”

“I know.”

Kevin must have sent a ‘home safe’ text. Either that, or Andrew has incredibly good timing. Or he’s tracking Neil with a GPS chip. Honestly, all three are completely plausible.

“How was family day?”

“Acceptable,” Andrew says. “Aaron was an embarrassment. He did not know what he was doing.” 

“But not Nicky?”

“I can pretend not to know Nicky.”

Neil’s helpless fondness breaks across his face in a smile. He glances up at the stubborn, endless red light he’s stopped at, then tips his head back against his seat. Everything is a tiny bit blurry. His skin is tight from sun and salt water. His hair is a stiff mess. He wants nothing more than to stand under a cool shower and fall into bed. 

“You gave Jean instructions,” Neil says. 

Andrew’s pause is a second too long. “He doesn’t know how high maintenance you are yet.”

“I was okay,” Neil says quietly. “It was okay.”

Andrew isn’t great with feelings—anyone’s feelings—so Neil expects a dismissive reply, but Andrew just says, “Good.” 

“Volleyball got intense. If you’d been there, I think Kevin would have begged you to hobble someone for him.”

Andrew makes a vaguely amused noise. Neil closes his eyes and lets the sound of Andrew wash over him—his impassive but honeyed voice, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the rustles of fabric that make Neil pretty sure he’s flopped in bed. The image flashes clear into his head—Andrew half propped against his wooden headboard, the pillows shoved behind his shoulders. The covers would be messy and tangled around his legs. His armbands are probably off. Is it weird that Neil can picture him so clearly? It’s probably weird.

“He always forgets you’re an option,” Andrew says. 

“That’s my cover,” Neil responds lightly. “Harmless and innocent.” 

Andrew’s voice is dry but amused when he responds, “Dense and incompetant.” 

A car horn sounds loudly behind him, jerking Neil out of the almost meditative state of sitting still in a running car. He looks up to see the light has finally turned green. The car horn blares again. He hits the gas hastily and lurches through the intersection.

“Problem?” Andrew asks. 

“A very old man was blocking the road. With a stroller. He dropped a bag of groceries.”

“Idiot.” 

“Andrew?”

Andrew says nothing, but the stillness at the other end of the line assures Neil that he’s listening. Neil takes a quiet, slow breath, and then says, “Why is it a bad idea?”

More stillness. Neil takes a gentle right turn easily and pretends like he can’t hear his own heartbeat. The silence stretches. Neil breaks quickly. “Sorry,” he says in a rush. “Never mind.”

“Neil.”

“Hey, I just got home. I’ll talk to you later?”

Andrew hesitates long enough this time for Neil to actually pull up behind his building, park, and turn off the car. The sound of the driver’s side door closing seems to break Andrew out of whatever he was doing instead of speaking. “Later,” Andrew agrees. 

Neil taps the red button on his phone and resolutely walks up his stairs. There’s a tight, buzzing feeling in his chest. He shouldn’t have said that. Andrew doesn’t go back on his word—if he said it was a bad idea, then it’s a bad idea. Normally Andrew would just tell him to fuck off, but Neil knows this is more delicate. Every single one of their friends would tell him that Andrew doesn’t _do_ delicate, but it’s not true. When he needs to, he has a very gentle touch. Neil shouldn’t have put him in the kind of situation where he had to let someone close to him down diplomatically.

He will definitely not do it again.

___

Neil wakes to bright light, the low murmur of the tv, and the smell of fresh coffee. Andrew.

Blearily, he shuffles to the bathroom, rubs the sleep out of his eyes, and brushes his teeth. When he shuffles back out, the TV is turned to the Cartoon Network and Andrew is leaning in the kitchen, drinking an enormous iced coffee through a straw. It’s not particularly unusual for Andrew to come over unannounced—he does have his own key, after all—but this is unexpected, considering their phone call last night. 

Neil feels his mind whip through a carousel of horrible possibilities. What if Andrew is here to let him down gently. What if he’s about to get a patient explanation of why Andrew isn’t _actually_ into him and was just making some kind of weird point about his relationship with Jean. What if that’s too naive and Neil is actually about to get a lecture about the un-coolness of asking someone why they don’t want to kiss you again. 

It’s fine. He can handle this conversation. He’s survived far worse. 

Neil takes the coffee cup that Andrew pushes across the counter to him and sips cautiously. Andrew has a habit of bringing him random drinks to try since he, apparently, has the palate of a dog that has just eaten a ghost pepper. Some of Andrew’s offerings are more successful than others. This one tastes like the oatmilk honey latte he’d liked a few weeks ago, so he takes a second sip. 

“Thanks,” Neil says. He leans semi-awkwardly against the counter, careful not to put himself in the same place he’d been the other night. “What’s up?”

“Last night,” Andrew says. “You asked me a question.”

Okay, sure. Dive right into it. “It’s okay,” Neil says hastily. “It was stupid, sorry.” 

Andrew reaches out and grips his chin, forcing Neil to look at him directly. “Neil. Shut up.”

Neil keeps his mouth shut despite the painful urge to apologize again. 

“You asked me why it was a bad idea.”

Neil opens his mouth to respond, and then remembers he’s supposed to be shutting up. He shuts up.

“I wanted to do it. You didn’t. It shouldn’t have happened.”

Neil frowns, his brow creasing hard enough that he can feel his eyebrows pulling towards each other. “I didn’t?”

“You never have,” Andrew reminds him. “You and Jean getting together does not change the fact that I should have respected that.” 

“Shouldn’t I get to decide if I want to or not?”

Andrew arches an eyebrow. He still hasn’t let go of Neil’s chin. His hands are gentle and warm and rough with callouses. It’s somehow reassuring that Andrew is touching him. It seems less like he’s going to tell Neil to go fuck himself and leave forever.

“I didn’t know it was an option,” Neil says. “I do want to.” 

Andrew finally drops his hand from Neil’s face and rakes it through his own hair, displacing what had previously been a reasonably well-tamed collection of golden curls. “I guess he is doing it wrong.”

It takes Neil a second to make the connection, but when he does, he feels his shoulders relax and the furrow in his brow ease. “He’s not doing it at all,” Neil says. “It’s fake.”

The shuttering of Andrew’s already guarded expression is absolute and immediate. “Fake?” he asks, in a deceptively mild tone. 

“He asked me to pretend,” Neil explains. “To be dating him. As a favor.”

“A favor,” Andrew repeats. His hand drops and hangs limply at his side. 

“Riko,” Neil says. This is apparently not enough, because Andrew gives him his patented _say more about this right now_ face. Neil sighs. “He was hitting on Jean a lot. Jean told him he had a boyfriend to get him to back off. And, voilà.” He gestures to himself.

It takes Andrew a minute to process this, but eventually his gaze sharpens and he takes a step forward, into Neil’s space. 

“You’re telling me,” Andrew says calmly. “That Jean made this your problem instead of telling Riko to fuck off. And now it’s my problem.”

“I don’t know,” Neil says, surprised. “I don’t think that’s what he meant to do. And it’s not your—”

Andrew’s eyes narrow. 

“Okay,” Neil admits. “I guess that’s not entirely inaccurate.”

Andrew snorts. “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

Neil suppresses a smile. Back on familiar ground. “I feel like we’re getting off track.”

“I am the track,” Andrew corrects. “It goes where I do.”

“Then don’t take it to Riko.”

Andrew gives him a disapproving look, but he does step forward again, bracing his hands against the counter on either side of Neil’s hips. Neil feels the brush of knuckles like a brand against his skin. Andrew’s eyes are dark and fixed on him and deeper than they’ve ever been. He says, “You’re not interested in Jean.”

“No,” Neil says. “It’s all for show.”

“So nothing has changed.” 

Neil has absolutely no idea how to interpret that, much less how to respond to it. He desperately replays everything Andrew has said to him on this topic—he doesn’t have Andrew’s memory, but he seizes onto ‘I wanted to, you didn’t’ from earlier. The intensity with which Andrew had kissed him. The way Andrew is keeping their bodies just far apart enough that they don’t really touch. Carefully, Neil reaches out and tangles a few fingers loosely in Andrew’s shirt. 

“Jean changed nothing,” he says. “But you did. I didn’t know—I mean, I don’t want to assume.”

“That I’m attracted to you?” Andrew asks. 

Neil feels a surge of heat coloring his face, weakening his knees, twisting in his stomach. Andrew looks as though he’s just asked Neil if he wants something from the fridge, but Neil can feel the tension in his forearms, can hear the careful inhales and exhales as Andrew measures his breaths. 

“Andrew,” Neil says, tugging him closer. “Can you just kiss me again?”

This time, when Andrew leans in, Neil knows exactly where the free falling feeling comes from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: first, I want you to know that there's a point at which Neil should have said "whom" and instead says "who" because most people don't use whom in casual speech, but it hurt me. 
> 
> Second, I'm trying to do a Tumblr. My name there is @alittlelately -- please teach me the ways.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew has a very good holiday Monday. Riko makes an offer. Neil has a playdate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a real _Veronica Mars_ moment in this chapter. I had a real _Brooklyn 99_ one, too.
> 
> This one got long on me. Whoops.

_”Oh my god, you guys. You guys.”_

_“What?”_

_“Did you see the pictures Allison Reynolds posted on her Insta stories?”_

_“Um?”_

_“From the_ beach _.”_

_“No, why?”_

_“Kevin Day. Without a shirt. Wet. Very small bathing suit.”_

_“Oh my god, are you serious? Was it glorious? Are they still up?”_

_“I don’t think so.”_

_“Why didn’t you text me?”_

_“You were with your grandparents! And I was spending quality time with my shower head.”_

_“_ Dammit. _I have_ got _to learn how to play exy.”_

The floodgates open. Neil spends most of the rest of the Monday holiday on his back, with Andrew’s weight holding him down and the taste of Andrew’s mouth on his tongue. Their abandoned coffees meet at a lukewarm middle, Andrew’s iced concoction forgotten in a pool of condensation on the counter. Neil’s whole body buzzes with a feeling he didn’t even know existed. 

They wind up and stop and breathe and make it five minutes, maybe ten, sometimes three and fall into each other again, Neil’s hands on Andrew’s shoulders or in his hair, Andrew’s roaming but never dipping more than fingertips under Neil’s clothes. 

Neil is too big for his skin and his hands have grown wings—they keep reaching out and reaching out, fluttering carefully until they can find a perch somewhere that makes Andrew hum his approval. Someday he’ll remember it all as a blur of Andrew pressed too hot against his chest and the sounds Andrew makes when Neil mouths his neck and this restless feeling he can’t kiss away, mixed with blindingly clear memories of Andrew’s fingers stroking the tender skin at the back of his knee and the press of Andrew’s teeth under his jaw.

When Andrew finally tears himself away—with a great deal more self-control than Neil has access to—his fair skin is red from rubbing against the light stubble Neil hadn’t had a chance to shave off that morning. His hair is hopeless. He takes a few unsteady steps towards the door and braces a hand against it, looking back with an expression Neil has never seen on his face before. 

Neil rubs at his face and sits up, moving carefully in deference to the aching hardness in his pants. 

“Andrew,” he says, blinking at him. “About Jean—”

Andrew shakes his head, cutting him off. “You don’t have to stop. I don’t care.” 

Neil doesn’t know how that could be possible. He feels like they belong to each other in a totally new way now. Could Andrew really be that unaffected?

“You don’t care,” Neil parrots. 

“It’s dumb as fuck,” Andrew shrugs. “Pointless. Pathetic. But it’s your bad decision to make.”

“Is it,” Neil starts, frowning, then tries again. “With us, is it--”

“There’s no us,” Andrew corrects. “I’m not interested in being anyone’s boyfriend.”

Which is—well, that’s about as clear as anyone could hope for. Neil wants to ask if this was a one-time thing, or if that was really meaningless for Andrew, but he doesn’t. Andrew never says anything impulsively. There’s a reason for that answer, Neil just needs to figure it out. He nods slowly and says, “Okay.” 

“Okay?” Andrew asks, his voice pitched somewhere in the neighborhood of relief. 

“Yeah,” Neil says. “Okay.”

Andrew has shoved his feet back into his shoes by now but he pauses for a long moment, his hand twisting the doorknob back and forth. He swings it open, knocks his knuckles under the security chain the way he always does, and disappears through the door. Neil watches the closed door for a minute and then gets up, leaving the chain unlatched in defiance. He heads, instead, to the bathroom, where he jerks off and feels, for the first time, like what’s pumping through his veins is electricity.

___

On Wednesday, Neil slides into the empty stretch of bench next to Jean at their lunch table and leans into him. Jean turns to smile at him and Neil says, very solemnly, “Bonjour, mon loup.”

Jean’s smile brightens into incandescence. He drapes an arm around Neil’s shoulders and tugs him closer. “Matt and Dan have just made us a very attractive offer.”

Neil looks warily across the table. “Is this a sex thing?”

“No!” Matt says. “Well, I mean, who am I to say how the night will end.” 

“A double date,” Dan interrupts, smiling. “The theater in Lexington is playing _The Princess Bride_ this weekend.”

“What’s that?” Neil asks. 

Matt makes an over-the-top horrified face at Neil and presses his hand to his chest, dramatically appalled. It’s a little undercut by the amused depth of his voice. “It’s only the greatest love story of all time.”

“Oh, I see,” Allison pipes up. “Are we just pretending that _Moulin Rouge_ doesn’t exist?”

Katelyn chimes in with, “Or _Titanic_?”

“Wow,” Matt says, shaking his head. “You guys really find death romantic, don’t you? I like when they live. And get to hump each other forever.”

“ _The Fault in Our Stars_?” Laila offers from the other end of the table. 

“Not better. Way worse,” Matt shoots back. “You’ll see, Neil. No one dies in _The Princess Bride_.”

“Well—” Dan starts, but is quickly interrupted by Matt, who covers her mouth to stifle the rest of her sentence. 

This discussion of movies Neil has never seen nor had any desire to see is cut off, thankfully, by Kevin and Andrew arriving at the table. Andrew sits down heavily across from Jean and makes room for Kevin to squeeze in between him and Aaron on the other side by basically pushing sideways until Dan is half in Matt’s lap, still laughing against his palm. There’s a small flurry of activity as Matt and Dan try to fit together, Kevin shifts until he’s the right distance from both Andrew and Aaron. Andrew sits impassively, the eye of the storm, the immovable center of this whole pile-up that he started. Neil is as fond of Andrew’s bored expression as he is of the people awkwardly adjusting around him. 

Jean’s arm is still draped around Neil, his thumb rubbing absent circles on Neil’s bicep. Andrew’s eyes flick to it and then away, with no more interest than he might show a mosquito. Everything between them has been normal. Or, at least, Andrew has been normal. Neil feels the slightest bit off-balance, but he keeps it to himself. So they kissed once. A few times. For a few hours. For most of the day. The whole day. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t even surprise him that Andrew doesn’t want to do the whole boyfriend thing. Neil isn’t completely sold on it himself; faking it with Jean is easy and warm and increasingly comfortable, but he’s pretty sure most of that is because it’s not real. He’s not actually putting any of himself out there for others to see. However uncomfortable that idea is for him, it has to be exponentially worse for Andrew.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Dan says, amusement dancing in her eyes. “What do you guys say?”

“Yeah,” Neil says. “It sounds fun. I’m in.”

He’s a little proud of himself that he doesn’t look at anyone else for guidance on accepting this invitation. 

“What’s that?” Kevin asks. 

“We’re double-dating,” Matt explains. “Neil and Jean have agreed to be our dates to see _The Princess Bride_ this weekend.” 

“Oh,” Neil says. “Is that what that means?”

Kevin says, “No,” at the same moment Matt says, “Yes.”

There’s a second of still silence and then most of the rest of the table bursts into laughter at this joke Neil’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually understand. He looks to Jean for translation, but he just shrugs and kisses the side of Neil’s head fondly. When Neil checks across the table to see what Andrew thinks of all this, he finds him studiously disassembling his sandwich and transferring the vegetables to Kevin’s plate. Neil is getting used to having these things fly over his head without worrying that he’s missing something vital to fitting in. Or staying alive. He thinks they’re probably reaching on this one, though.

“We can meet at my place,” Neil offers. “If you want. Take one car.” 

“I’ll drive us,” Jean volunteers. “I can borrow my mother’s Mercedes.”

“See?” Matt says, leaning forward to point at Kevin around the blockade of Dan and Andrew’s bodies. “A handsome foreign man in a very nice car is going to drive me to the most romantic movie in the world.” 

“My mistake,” Kevin says drily. “I’ll come over and help you pick out the right outfit.”

“Would you really?”

“No.”

Neil feels something hard bump his foot under the table and looks up, finally catching Andrew’s eyes. Andrew keeps his face neutral, apparently more interested in the bag of chips he’s holding, but the hard thing under the table shifts and gently settles itself on top of Neil’s toes and he recognizes, suddenly, the weight of Andrew’s boot.

___

When they drop everyone off and pull into Neil’s parking lot, Andrew bypasses his motorcycle and follows Neil up the stairs to his apartment. He kicks the door closed behind them and backs Neil against it, stopping a hair’s breadth from Neil’s mouth to ask, “Yes or no?”

Neil’s answering _yes_ is fervent and whispered and broken by Neil gasping a quick inhale before Andrew’s kissing him hungrily, his hands and mouth demanding, his breath shallow and his rapid pulse pounding through the delicate skin of his neck and into Neil’s palms. 

Neil thinks: _oh, thank fuck_ and lurches towards the edge of wherever Andrew is leading. Andrew spins them off the door; Neil tries to stay close, to keep their mouths together, but Andrew pushes him away and turns him by one shoulder, giving him a gentle shove towards the living room. 

“Couch,” Andrew says. “You’re going to fall down and break something.”

“Ego,” Neil says, grinning over his shoulder. Andrew just shrugs and gives him another shove, so he goes, toeing out of his shoes and kicking them off on the way, prying his phone out of his pocket and dropping it onto the table, falling onto the couch on his back. He presses one bent knee against the back of the cushions and makes room for Andrew to crawl onto him.

Because Andrew wasn’t wrong. This makes Neil’s knees weak. 

There’s a moment of impatient shifting where Andrew hits the cushions between Neil’s legs and Neil has to toss one of Allison’s throw pillows to the side, and Andrew finds a way to brace against the arm of the couch. He hovers a minute, looking at Neil with amber eyes, and then he ducks to press his mouth to the base of Neil’s neck and Neil loses several more hours in the timelessness of Andrew’s arms.

___

The hand that falls on Neil’s shoulder is heavy and sudden. He jumps, but he’s standing too close to his locker to get any kind of space.

“Neil,” Riko’s smooth, light voice says, disturbingly close to Neil’s ear. 

“Riko,” Neil replies, very deliberately shrugging off the hand and side-stepping to get more space. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“Apologies,” Riko says—no, purrs. Riko purrs. He casually braces one hand on the lockers beside them so that Neil is sort of trapped between Riko’s arm and his open locker door. He could close the door and go that way, but he’d have to step _into_ Riko’s body to get it done. If he turns around to face Riko, they’ll be way too close for comfort. 

Neil reminds himself that Riko is not a threat, that they are in a very public place, that Riko is unarmed and maybe a little unhinged but can’t actually hurt him. Not really. Not without a much better strategy. Don’t react, he tells himself. Ignore it. 

“What do you want?” Neil asks. “And why are you still standing behind me?” 

Riko, finally, shifts enough to prop his shoulder against the locker beside Neil’s. He’s still too close, but he’s not the walls of a cage anymore. “I’m here to make you an offer,” Riko says easily. 

“No, thanks.”

“My uncle installed a new training tool in our home gym. Only the best professional teams are using it.”

Neil’s automatic _no_ turns into a _probably not_ and then a _well, maybe_ in the span of those two sentences. “Why me?” he asks.

“Why not you?” Riko counters. “Your progress just under Kevin’s tutelage has been impressive. Wouldn’t you like to see if you could do bigger and better things?”

“And that’s you?” Neil asks skeptically. “Bigger and better?”

“Well,” Riko smirks. “In a manner of speaking.”

“What is it?” Neil asks, impatient. “Your new thing?”

“Ah, no,” Riko says, smiling widely. “You’ll have to come see for yourself. But believe me when I tell you it could help you get through even Minyard’s defenses.” 

Neil starts trying to think of what this new training tool could be. The Moriyamas are rich as fuck, so...a robot? Would a robot be better than Andrew? Probably not. Maybe three robots. He doesn’t think Riko is lying, though. Riko is as obsessed with Exy as he and Kevin are. 

“What about Kevin?” Neil asks. 

“What about him?”

“Is he invited?”

Riko shrugs easily. “Kevin can sometimes be unpleasant to work with. My uncle finds him too aggressive, so he prefers we minimize Kevin’s time in the gym.” 

That...does not sound right. Well, it definitely does sound right in as much as Kevin is aggressive and sometimes unpleasant to work with. But hearing Riko describe him that way—it’s like having a screaming toddler on an airplane complain that someone else is chewing too loudly. Neil blinks a few times, trying to reconcile these two ideas in his mind. _Does_ Riko simply find Kevin to be too aggressively competitive? Is that what the world looks like to him? Does he go home at night despairing of how rude and dismissive people are of him? Neil is more inclined to think Riko is full of shit than opening up about his true feelings to _Neil_ , of all people, but—

“I don’t know exactly what they told you about me,” Riko says, shrugging. “But have I ever wronged you?”

Neil searches and searches for a time he can point to where Riko was anything other than just generally petulant, arrogant, and entitled. He can’t think of a single thing—he’s just seen the attitude and heard the stories. “I—” Neil starts, then trails off when he doesn’t know how to complete the sentence. 

“Give me a chance,” Riko cajoles. “All we really know about each other is gossip.”

Neil gives him a considering once-over. Riko’s body language is casual, slumped against the lockers the way he is. His hair is pulled back, the bun loose enough that a few strands have escaped and wisp around his face. Neil thinks again that he should be beautiful. When he looks past Riko’s shoulder, he sees a couple of girls staring in their direction, whispering and giggling. Through different eyes, Neil realizes, Riko is probably hot and charming. Maybe even extremely so.

“So,” Neil says skeptically, “You’re really a nice, misunderstood guy and you want to help me with Exy out of the kindness of your own heart.”

“Yes,” Riko says. His face breaks into a wide, very white smile. “I’m not without ulterior motives, though. You’re very good. You can push me to get better. I can do the same for you.”

Neil really wants to know what magical Exy technology Riko has at home. He also feels, oddly, a little called out—he didn’t ever give Riko a chance. He let his first impression join everyone else’s disdain and just hopped unquestioningly on the Riko Sucks train. How many times has he been the name on that train at other schools? 

“Okay,” Neil says slowly. “I’ll come.”

What’s the worst that could happen? Riko’s an arrogant prick? Big fucking deal.

Riko’s smile turns into something that feels truer to Neil. It still doesn’t sit quite right. 

“Great,” Riko says. “I’ll text you. Sometime this weekend?”

“Sure,” Neil says. 

Riko straightens off the wall and cups his hand over Neil’s shoulder again, squeezing before letting go and taking a few backwards steps down the hall. The brilliance of his smile feels incongruous. It leaves Neil a little disoriented. One of the giggling girls deliberately steps into Riko’s path so that he’ll bump into her. More giggling ensues, high against the low tone of Riko’s charm. 

Neil takes the opportunity to close his locker and get moving. He only takes a few steps of his own before he, too, is colliding with someone: Kevin. And Andrew. 

“That looked cozy,” Andrew says mildly. 

Kevin glares between them. “What did he want?”

“He invited me over,” Neil says. “To try some new practice equipment he has.”

They wait, as though expectant that he has more to say. He’s pretty damn sure that was a complete sentence. 

“I said yes,” he offers, hoping it’ll do the trick.

“You said _what_?” Kevin hisses. 

“Uh, yes.”

“But...why?”

“I—” Neil holds his hands up helplessly. Is he really going to tell them that Riko claims they’re misrepresenting him and Neil has agreed to give him a chance to see another side? Is he going to tell them that he’s just using Riko for his expensive Exy shit? How does this keep happening to him, honestly. “I don’t know.”

Kevin is vibrating at a frequency Neil has never seen from him before. He is luminous with anger. Neil has never believed in the ideas of sparks in eyes, but he’s pretty sure this is what all those writers meant. Kevin grits out, “You gave _me_ your game.” 

“I know,” Neil says. “It’s yours. I don’t know. He was being weird. Nice.”

“Nice,” Kevin snorts. “Well, don’t call me if he kneecaps you during your quality time together.”

Neil says, “Kevin,” but Kevin just holds up a hand and turns on his heel, stalking off with the speed afforded him by his impossibly long legs. 

“Hmm,” Andrew hums. “What did he really say?”

“That he could help me beat you,” Neil shoots back. “How could I resist?” 

Andrew doesn’t exactly roll his eyes, but he does aim them at the ceiling briefly. “Truth,” he orders. 

“That is the truth. But, he also said—” Neil shakes his head, frustrated. “He said I never gave him a chance. That I just believed what I was told about him.” 

“Ah,” Andrew says. “It is very unfair when you’re an asshole and word of you being an asshole gets out and other people find out that you’re an asshole. Very tragic. Anyone can just say anything they want, right?”

“Well—” Neil starts, then cuts himself off again. He’d fallen for that, he had. He’d tumbled right into memories of being the weird new kid, the stand-offish kid, the homeless kid, the kid whose whole personality was a painful jumble of assumptions made by strangers. The problem, of course, is that he’d forgotten something: he hasn’t been hearing random whispers about Riko. He’s been told about Riko by some of the few people he’s ever really trusted. 

He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, again, helplessly. He’s never said a truer thing. His life is one tangled mess after another of people he thought he knew being weird all of a sudden. If Riko is this upset about losing Jean, why doesn’t he just punch Neil in the face and move on?

“I know,” Andrew says. It almost sounds sympathetic, except for how that’s not a register of Andrew’s voice at all. “You never do.” 

“Hey,” Neil protests. “It’s not me. It’s everyone else.” 

Andrew reaches out and tucks two fingers underneath the strap of Neil’s backpack, running them down the padded uppers to the narrow nylon length and tugging when he gets the right amount of leverage. “We have Bio.”

Neil allows the pull of Andrew’s fingers to tip him into motion; he trails as Andrew pushes, winds, and slides between clusters of students until they reach their classroom door, ducking in just as the first trills of the bell begin to ring.

___

Neil has his gear bag slung over his shoulder and his racquet tucked under his arm and is trying to juggle his water bottle and his keys while un-tucking the tightly folded-in back of the shoe he’s just shoved his foot into when his phone vibrates. Neil swears quietly and gives up on the shoe, moving enough shit from one arm to the other that he can pull the phone out of his back pocket. He has a text from Andrew: _heads up_.

Neil sends back however many question marks the press of his thumb produces, then winces at the time. 11:47. He meant to leave two minutes ago. Whatever is going to happen with Riko, he’d rather not piss the guy off right away by being late. He crams the phone back into his pocket so he can finally shuffle through the door, slightly favoring the foot with the fucked-up shoe until he can get downstairs and free up his hands to fix it. 

When he gets downstairs, though, he hits an invisible wall of alarm and stops short. Parked behind his car is a very large, very shiny black SUV. Rarely a good sign, in Neil’s experience. 

Don’t run, he tells himself. Black SUV people aren’t looking for you anymore. Probably. It’s just a random car. Plenty of people have black SUVs for no particular reason other than they want to feel all CIA. Do not drop all of this shit and run. Especially do not drop your racquet. Do not—the window starts to roll down and Neil snaps to attention, his heart racing, only to have the tinted glass reveal Kevin sitting in the passenger seat. 

Jesus. 

“Kevin,” Neil calls grouchily. “What are you doing here?”

“We’re driving you.” Kevin rolls his eyes. Good sign. “Get in.”

Neil shrugs his bag higher over his shoulder and works a couple of the smaller things in his hands into his pockets as he approaches the car. He peers through Kevin’s open window to spot Andrew in the driver’s seat; it’s pulled forward so far that the huge steering wheel seems pressed too close to his chest. 

Neil inhales the mingled scents of sweat and leather and remembers. This is Wymack’s car. 

“I can drive myself,” he points out. 

“And then he can keep you there forever,” Kevin retorts. “This way you have an escape route.” 

“And you want me to explain my personal chauffeur service how, exactly?”

“I already thought of that,” Kevin says, his eyes gleaming. “You have a flat tire. Andrew, give me a knife.”

Neil laughs, but stops abruptly when Andrew fishes one out and hands it over. 

“For fuck’s sake.” Neil leans heavily into the door so that Kevin can’t open it and start stabbing things. “You don’t have to _actually_ slash my tires.”

He thinks he sees a pout flash quickly across Kevin’s face, but it’s gone before he can be sure. “Then get in the car,” Kevin commands. “Andrew, open the tailgate.”

Andrew reaches down and pops the lever; his obedience is an unusual reaction to that particular tone coming out of Kevin’s mouth. 

“You guys,” Neil sighs. “This seems unnecessary.” 

“You don’t know him like I do,” Kevin says darkly. “You’re too trusting.”

And that—that is an accusation Neil has never, ever, not even once, had leveled at him before. He’s so surprised by it that he takes a step back, which is all Kevin needs to gently push his door open and squeeze out. 

“Here,” Kevin says. “Give me your gear.”

Neil doesn’t resist as Kevin unburdens him of his bag and his racquet before scanning Neil head to toe and sighing, disappointed. “Fix your shoe, Josten,” Kevin says. “Get it together.”

His hands suddenly empty, Neil blinks through the open window at Andrew, who is watching him with what appears to be mild curiosity. Neil hasn’t seen him since after school yesterday, when Andrew climbed across the console of the Kia into Neil’s lap, dropped the seat back, and kissed him until the windows were hazy. The interior of the car is black and Andrew’s clothes and armbands are black. Something about all those dark tones and the lightness of Andrew’s skin and hair make him glow. Almost angelic. Almost. 

“How did he talk you into this?” Neil asks. 

“He didn’t talk me into anything,” Andrew counters. “He’s right about you. You’re an idiot.” He pauses. “And I get to drive Coach’s car.”

“Alright, fine,” Neil sighs. “How long am I staying?”

“Two hours,” Kevin calls from the rear of the Expedition. He slams it shut and steps back around, glancing down critically at Neil’s still fucked-up shoe. “But you can call us if you need an out before then.”

Neil kind of doubts that. Whatever weird shit is motivating Riko, Exy is still Exy. “You know,” he says, but lets himself be bodily shifted towards the backseat by Kevin. “I already had an out. I have that movie thing in Lexington tonight.” 

“That’s like eight hours away,” Kevin says dismissively. “He’s very toxic. Get in the car.”

Neil is hoping they’ll drop him off at the curb, but when they show up at the little red dot on the GPS, Andrew turns into the driveway. The long driveway. It winds up to an enormous brick house with careful, sterile landscaping. 

His hopes die further when Andrew turns off the car and tucks the keys into his pocket. Kevin opens his door and climbs out, shutting it loudly behind him. 

Neil lets out a deep, resigned breath and meets Andrew and Kevin at the back of the SUV. 

“Listen,” Kevin says, opening the tailgate and reaching for the gear he’d apparently re-packed when he’d put it in the back earlier. “Stay on your toes. Don’t try to outdo him. Avoid Tetsuji.” 

Neil thinks about reminding them that he’s going to play Exy for a couple of hours with his _high school teammate_ , but he’s not sure it’ll get him anywhere, so he keeps his mouth shut. He lets Kevin load him up with gear—admittedly in a better, more organized way than he’d packed his own—and watches as Kevin and Andrew exchange a glance. Andrew’s eyebrow raises, his head tipping towards the house, but Kevin shakes his own head in the negative. 

“No,” Kevin says. “I'll say something.” 

Neil’s eyes roll so hard it’s actually physically painful. Rubbing at one with a knuckle doesn’t really help, but by the time his vision has cleared, Kevin is moving back towards the passenger seat and Andrew is waiting. 

“What am I missing?” Neil asks. He hastens to move into step at Andrew’s side as he walks up the long, curving walkway. 

“Most things,” Andrew says wryly.

Neil doesn’t ask again. He trots beside Andrew until they get to the front door, where Andrew rings the bell and then turns to Neil and looks him over thoroughly from head to toe. Neil wishes it was some kind of come-on, but he doesn’t think it is. “It’s going to be fine,” Neil says. “I can handle bullies.” 

Andrew hums. 

Moments later, the enormous door in front of them opens, revealing Riko. The bright, marble-lined foyer behind him frames his silhouetted form. Neil registers that it’s supposed to be impressive, then looks back and discovers Riko and Andrew already eying each other. 

“Neil,” Riko says. “And a Minyard.”

“Andrew,” Neil corrects sharply. 

“What a pleasure,” Riko says. “Will you be joining us, Andrew? Goalies are rather superfluous in my gym, but I suppose I could find a use for you.”

“Nope,” Andrew pops. “Just dropping him off.” 

There’s a moment of tense silence—Andrew’s face blank, Riko’s smile bright and sharp, Neil shifting uncomfortably. 

Neil volunteers, “I had a flat tire.”

“Did you?” Riko asks, not looking away from Andrew. “How unfortunate.”

“Isn’t it?” Andrew asks blandly. “Luckily, we were nearby to come to the rescue.”

“You do seem to have a knack for that,” Riko says, still smiling. 

Andrew shrugs one shoulder. “I keep track of my things.”

“Exy,” Neil says loudly, shifting his bag more across his back. “I’m ready to play Exy.” 

It seems like they’re going to ignore him, but then Riko breaks and turns his wide smile on Neil. “Come in. I’ll take you around to the gym.” 

Neil takes a step forward but pauses before he crosses the threshold, looking back at Andrew. 

“We’re going to the movies,” Andrew says. “We’ll see you in a couple of hours.”

Neil translates this to ‘two, exactly,’ and resists the urge to look at his watch so he’ll know how exact that time limit is. He resists and resists and then sneaks a look when Riko turns to lead the way: 11:03. 

The house that Riko takes him through is huge, extravagant, and cold. Probably he’s supposed to be admiring it, but it reminds him too strongly of his father’s house. The curving banisters, the wide, shuttered windows, the dustless surfaces that scream of maid service. The soaring ceilings and white, plastered walls close in around him so that Neil is incredibly relieved to exit through one of the sparkling, excessively tall patio doors and head toward a blocky, modern building off to the side of the pool. 

“This is the gym,” Riko says, gesturing up at the matte charcoal cladding, the high, long windows. He pushes on the enormous slab of a door and it pivots at its center, creating parallel walkways about five feet wide. 

Neil steps inside and catches his breath. Half a regulation-sized Exy court stretches before him. The floors are pristine, the plexiglass so clean and clear that it’s practically invisible. One of the walls behind him has racks of equipment—racquets of every size, enough padding to outfit a team, and stacks of cones and targets and other practice-type shit Neil hasn’t even seen before. He takes a couple of reverent steps farther into the building and takes in the rest, unconsciously hushing his breath. The high windows let in slanting beams of natural light—they criss-cross near the top of the box and diffuse beautifully towards the outer walls. The walls alongside the court are lined with deep, plush leather furniture. There are a couple of glass-fronted refrigerators filled with water and what looks like snacks alongside some small tables for sitting and eating. 

It’s fucking paradise. 

“Come on,” Riko says. He sounds smug, but Neil can’t blame him. If this was his, he’d be intolerably pleased with himself too. “I’ll show you the rest.”

One of the doors at the rear of the court opens into a luxuriously appointed bathroom with private shower stalls and stacks of fluffy, white towels. The showers have jets. Dozens of jets. This connects to a generously sized private gym with weights and cardio machines and those weird, heavy ropes that people like to bang up and down on the floor. 

“I want to live here,” Neil says honestly as they emerge back into the part of the gym that houses the court. “How do you ever leave?”

“I mostly don’t,” Riko says. “Now let me show you my new toy.” 

It’s not a robot. It’s better than a robot. Riko takes him to the goal, which Neil now realizes is almost enclosed by more plexiglass panels—these are trifold, covering the whole front of the goal space and extending towards the wall until there are only a couple of feet left between the edge of the panel and the painted lines that mark the scoring area. The panels are dotted with openings—some barely larger than an Exy ball, some much larger, some square, some long vertical rectangles, some oblong. You can’t score on the goal at all without getting through one of them, Neil realizes. 

“The panels can be reconfigured,” Riko says, his voice so close that Neil startles—he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. “So you don’t get complacent.” 

“This is—” Neil starts, his eyes still glued to the box. “This is incredible.”

“Thank you.” Riko sounds genuinely, sincerely pleased. “Do you want to try it?”

“Yes,” Neil says ardently. “Very much.” 

Playing with Riko like this reminds Neil that Riko is, actually, very good. It’s easy to forget that during practice, when the team is battling itself in some form or another. Riko’s skill is much easier to appreciate during the season, when his glory-seeking, no-holds-barred playing style earns them points and victories. Alone here, Neil remembers that he plays with incredibly talented people on his random high school team. 

And Riko is, actually, for some reason, incredibly helpful. He walks Neil through some of the drills he uses for himself, intricate things that require such precision they could never be pulled off in a larger group practice. 

Riko says things like, “Kevin has you using this catch, but I’ve always thought you’d be able to handle this one” and “We’re both shorter, so let me show you this evasive maneuver I use sometimes against the taller backliners” and “Try popping your shoulder on these higher throws, it should get you a little boost” and that’s even before they start firing shots through the panels in front of the goal. Riko starts him on the larger openings, but lets him spend the last twenty minutes of their time firing and missing and firing and missing and firing and missing at a hole the size of a grapefruit. His shots get closer and closer and then bounce of the edges and then, finally, when Neil’s arms are exhausted and sweat is trickling down his lower back, he twists his wrist just so and the ball sails toward the hole on a smooth, perfect arc and passes, an inch clear in every direction, right through. It hits the goal wall and the red lights gleam and Neil throws both arms up in triumph. 

“You got it,” Riko says. He steps closer and reaches out, taking Neil’s racquet so that he can stretch out his arms. “Sometime you’ll have to try it running.”

And oh, shit, yes. _Running_. He wants to do that. He reaches for his racquet again but Riko pulls it back, laughing. 

“It’s almost one o’clock. I’m sure Minyard will be here to pick you up from our playdate soon.” 

Right. Two hours. Dammit. Neil looks longingly towards the goal again, but he knows Riko isn’t wrong, so he follows Riko to the towels and takes one of the large, frosty bottles of water Riko hands over. 

“Hey,” Neil says, feeling a little awkward. “Thanks, really. This was great.” 

“Any time,” Riko says. This time, the smile sits a little easier on his face. “Really, any time. Very few people care as much about this as I do.” 

Neil—wants to come back, he realizes. Maybe Riko was just on his best behavior, maybe he’s working an angle, maybe Neil was too distracted to notice him being an asshole. Honestly, Neil has no idea. Riko doesn’t even really need to be here with him. Maybe he’ll just break in and spend hours there himself. He could do it. He does have the skills. 

He’s about to open his mouth and see what comes out, but his attention is pulled away by the ringing of his phone. Kevin’s name lights up on the screen, beneath the time: 1:02. Neil isn’t sure if he wants to roll his eyes or smile, so he does some combination of both as he picks up the phone. 

“Hi,” Neil says. 

“We’re here,” Kevin announces. “Time to go.” 

Neil gives one last sad glance towards the court, then says, “Be right out.” 

This time, Riko walks him along the side of the house. The route is a much quicker path to the driveway, where Wymack’s gleaming SUV idles. Kevin is waiting impatiently by it, sunglasses on, hands shoved deep in his pockets. 

“Kevin,” Riko calls expansively. “How nice to see you, too.” 

Kevin makes a sour face at him and turns his attention to Neil. Since when does Kevin not at least pretend to play along with Riko? He steps forward, instead, and takes Neil’s gear out of his arms again. “Get in the car,” Kevin says imperiously. He takes a step towards the back, then stills, turning to nod stiffly at Riko. 

“Thanks again,” Neil tells Riko awkwardly. He wants to say ‘why aren’t you like that all the time?’ Or ‘why don’t you show other people this actually tolerable, helpful side of you?’ Or ‘maybe we could do this again sometime if you’re going to be not the worst.’”

Riko flashes a brilliant smile at him and rakes a hand through the loose mess of his hair. “Let me know if you ever want to come back.”

“I will,” Neil says. “Let you know, I mean.” 

Riko’s face is knowing and amused and, still, kind of fucking smug. Neil looks from him to Andrew, visible through the windshield. Andrew has his arm propped up on the door beside him while he gazes off across the lawn. His slouched position is casual but his arm is braced rigid against the wheel, his fingers tapping. The loud closing of the SUV’s cargo area draws Neil’s attention back to Kevin, who takes a few long strides to stand impatiently by the passenger door, one hand hooked through the handle. 

Neil feels poised at the intersection of some bizarre triangulation of testosterone-fueled tension. Precisely on the head of the pin. The air is so heated it shimmers alongside with the exhaust from the Expedition. He isn’t sure what he’s supposed to say here that won’t just make this way worse, so he gives up and shrugs instead, pulling his door open and climbing into the backseat without another word. Kevin slides into the front after him, slamming the passenger door shut and clicking his seatbelt into place viciously. 

They make it all the way down the driveway and almost to the front of Riko’s neighborhood before Kevin finally breaks. “So?” Kevin asks tightly. “How was it?”

“Uh,” Neil says. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“He was fine,” Neil says slowly. “Helpful. His gym is amazing.” 

Kevin says nothing. Andrew nudges the turn signal on and rolls to a stop at the red light in front of them. Eventually, Kevin reaches out and flicks at the radio, cranking the volume up on Wymack’s favorite Pink Floyd CD. Neil realizes, suddenly, that Kevin is furious. Maybe at Neil, maybe at Riko. Neil is just bobbing around in the confluence of tempers. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I won’t go back.” 

“It’s fine,” Kevin says, his tone clipped. “I’ll just go with you next time.”

Neil brightens. He knows Kevin is pissed, that Riko is probably hiding his agenda, that there are levels to everyone’s weirdness that he isn’t even halfway to comprehending, but what he knows most of all is that having Kevin on that court with him would be heaven. He tries to suppress his smile but he’s not managing it well. When he looks up to make sure no one is rolling their eyes at him, he meets Andrew’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Stop smiling, he tells himself. Serious face. 

Andrew snorts quietly and turns his attention back to the road. “Junkie.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neil sees a movie. The Foxes need an extra chair. Andrew has some notes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter brought to you by every episode ever of _Brooklyn 99_ playing in the background of my living room.

_”You know that cheerleader, Katelyn?”_

_“With the pink hair?”_

_“Yeah, that one. I saw her hooking up with a certain very short blonde Exy player.”_

_“Which one?”_

_“Well, I’m not sure. But it was one of them. He was in long sleeves so I couldn’t tell.”_

_“Which do you_ think _it is?”_

_“Does it matter?”_

_“Probably to her.”_

_“Do you think if you were dating one of them, you’d kind of be dating both of them?”_

_“That….sounds like a lot of work.”_

_“You could ask her. Katelyn.”_

_“Oh, sure. Hey, Katelyn! Which Minyard twin had his tongue in your mouth this weekend. I’m sure that’ll go over great. And probably neither of them would kill me for it.”_

_“Yeah. I mean, Andrew for sure, but Aaron seems like he’d make it hurt.”_

_“Just Aaron?”_

_“Weirdly, I don’t think Andrew would want to waste that much time on you. He seems like he’d just end your life and then go on with his day.”_

Neil emerges, disoriented, into the jaundiced light of the movie theater lobby. His fingers are damp with sweat where they’re tangled with Jean’s, because, apparently, that’s what happens when you hold hands for two hours. Matt is right on his heels—literally, occasionally catching just the back edge of Neil’s shoe with his toes—enthusiastically recounting the plot of the movie for him and occasionally colliding with Neil’s back when he doesn’t stop quite short enough.

“Were you surprised by the reveal?” he asks, eagerly. “That it was Wesley?” 

No, Neil thinks. He’s familiar with the transition of titles from one criminal to another. Before he can answer, Matt has moved on to a new question: “What was the worst part of the fire swamp?”

“Um,” Neil says. “Definitely the swamp.”

Jean squeezes his fingers and looks back over his shoulder, amused. “The rats,” Jean reminds him. “And the quicksand.”

“And the flame spurts,” Matt says. “Don’t forget those.” 

“What’s yours?” Neil asks. 

“I would kick the fire swamp’s whole ass,” Matt says. “Did you have a favorite character?”

“The guy with the sword,” Neil says. “Indigo?”

“Inigo,” Matt supplies. “Why him?”

“He kind of reminds me of someone I know,” Neil answers vaguely. 

“Matt,” Dan says, amused, from the back of the group. “Let’s get to the restaurant before you start the interrogation.”

“The restaurant is supposed to be for analysis,” Matt says. “But fine.”

Neil crunches his way over popcorn and lurid, decades-old carpet, his field of vision mostly filled with Jean’s back, and then they emerge into the chilly fall air. Neil has always run a little cold and the meager barrier of his jeans and jacket do virtually nothing to stop his body temperature from dropping about 15 degrees. His skin prickles immediately and he allows one full-body shudder before locking it down.

“Cold?” Jean asks. 

Neil shakes his head no, but Jean ignores it and pulls him closer anyway, huddling a little to form a shield between Neil and the breeze. 

Completely unnecessary. 

“I’ll survive,” Neil says drily. “But thank you.”

Jean bats his eyelashes and switches to French, “ _I did promise you that I’d be an excellent boyfriend._ ” 

“ _You know the difference would be lost on me, right?_ ”

He belies this statement by leaning closer and shifting a bit to the left so that he can’t feel the wind around Jean at all. 

“ _Nonsense_ ,” Jean says, rubbing his hands briskly over Neil’s arms. “ _I’ll ruin you for all other men._ ”

“That’s very romantic,” Matt declares. “Dan, let’s learn a foreign language.” 

“Just not French,” Jean says. “How would we keep our secrets?” 

“Something obscure,” Matt agrees. “We have secrets, too.” 

Neil suggests, “Icelandic?”

“I think that’s a hint,” Dan says, grinning. “I can see you trying not to shiver there, Josten.” 

Neil raises his middle finger very deliberately in her direction. Dan laughs, but Matt makes a scandalized noise and takes Neil’s hand between his own, folding the finger down and chafing his fist dramatically. 

“We must get him indoors,” Matt announces. “I will not have a man’s life on my conscience.” 

Neil, at worst, could use another layer. Protesting will do him absolutely no good, he knows, so he just allows himself to be shuffled along like Matt is in real fear for his life. 

The restaurant Matt and Dan have chosen is nearby, at least, and close enough to walk. They wind a random path through the cars in the parking lot and cross the dry grass of the poorly maintained strip of landscape between the two businesses. The closer they get to the restaurant, the more distinctly they can hear the music that escapes every time someone pushes the door open. 

They push through a big glass door and into a diner-style chain restaurant decorated floor-to-ceiling with the kind of Americana whose provenance you’d better not look too closely at. An excessively friendly guy in a striped shirt leads them to a booth. With Andrew, there’s usually a silent battle for the outside seat, but Jean just slides in first, still chatting with Matt and apparently unconcerned with whether or not he’d be first to the door in case of a siege. Neil pushes in after him and goes, unresisting, when Jean drops an arm over his shoulder and draws him close for warmth.

“Last question about the movie, I swear,” Matt says, flipping his menu open. “Which of you is Wesley and which is Buttercup?” 

“I’m Wesley,” Dan says. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Matt agrees. “I’m Buttercup.” 

Neil looks up to find Jean smiling wryly down at him. “I think it’s clear,” Jean says, “that I am also the Buttercup.”

Dan makes a quiet whooping noise and extends her fist across the table for Neil to bump. 

“Okay, but for real,” Matt says. “Appetizers?”

Between the appetizers they don’t finish and the entrees they don’t finish and the dessert Matt stubbornly orders, their table turns into a post-apocalyptic battleground of plates. Neil leans heavily against Jean’s side, full to the point of sleepiness. 

“This was fun,” Dan says. “We should do it again.”

“We should,” Neil says. He means it. It was fun. Next time he’ll put his foot down at one deep-fried pre-dinner plate, but he thinks there could definitely be a next time. 

“You can pick the movie,” Matt says magnanimously. “Just pick something good.” He reaches for the check when the server turns back up, but Jean is faster, plucking it away before Matt can get a hand on it. 

“I must insist,” Jean says. 

“No way,” Matt argues. “We invited you.”

“Very graciously,” Jean agrees. “Which is why I’ll pay.” 

“We can at least split it,” Matt says, reaching across the table. “You take Dan, I’ll take Neil.” 

“It’s on me,” Jean says firmly. He’s already tucked a card into it, so he leans across Neil to set it safely on their corner of the table, out of Dan and Matt’s reach. 

“Let the beautiful man buy you dinner, baby,” Dan says, patting Matt’s cheek. “You’ve earned it.”

The smile Matt directs at her is brilliant and besotted. “You’re right,” he says, ducking to kiss the inside of her wrist. “I deserve it for these good looks and sparkling conversation. I’m going to tell Kevin.”

“Maybe wait until tomorrow,” Neil says. “He was really pissed last time I saw him.”

“Which was?” Jean asks. 

“Earlier today,” Neil says. “He insisted on driving me to and from Riko’s.”

For a moment, the silence is luxurious, but then he realizes it’s out of place and looks up to find all three of them staring at him, Jean having craned his neck back to do so.

“Riko’s?” Jean asks lightly. 

“Didn’t I tell you? He invited me over to practice.” 

“Riko?” Dan asks.

“Yeah.”

“Moriyama?” Matt asks slowly. 

“Is there another one?”

“You went to Riko’s house to practice,” Jean says carefully. “Alone.”

“Yes,” Neil says, exasperated. “I think we’ve covered that.”

“But...why?” Matt asks. 

“He has this new training thing.” Neil shrugs. “It was intense. Have you _seen_ his home gym? It’s incredible. It has everything. It’s a complete half court.”

“No offense,” Dan says gently, “but why would Riko invite you over to practice alone? He doesn’t usually take an interest in younger players.”

“Even less offense,” Matt pipes up, “but why would you _go_?”

Are they serious? Neil blinks from one perplexed face to another and says, “Exy?”

“Yeah,” Matt says. “But also, Riko.”

“He was fine,” Neil sighs. “We ran some drills. He said some helpful shit. I would have stayed longer if Kevin hadn’t given me a two hour time limit.”

He looks from Dan and Matt’s skeptical expressions up to Jean’s concerned one and shrugs. “He’s not an evil mastermind, guys. And even if he was, I think I could handle it. Can we change the subject?” 

“Yes,” Dan says firmly. “Our first game is next week. Let’s talk about that.”

He kind of expects Jean to be annoyed with him after that, but he isn’t. He pulls Neil a little tighter against him in the booth, opens the passenger door for him when they get to the car, and tangles their fingers up in Neil’s lap on the drive home. If anything, he sticks a little closer, rubbing rhythmic circles into the back of Neil’s hand and sending soft, worried looks across the car every few minutes. 

Guilt, Neil decides. Clearly, no one wants Riko anywhere near Neil. Jean’s favor obviously piqued Riko’s interest. He’ll have to remember to tell Jean he’s fine next time they’re alone. For now, he squeezes Jean’s hand in his lap and smiles at him in a way he hopes is reassuring. 

It’s only a twenty-ish minute drive back to his apartment, but it feels like it takes an hour. He’s spent _so_ much of today around people, and a lot of it has been fun, but he’s very ready to collapse onto his couch and stare mindlessly at the ceiling. The longing for solitude hums in his chest, whining higher the closer they get to home. By the time they pull into his complex, he’s battling the urge to throw himself from the slowly moving car and sprint to his door. 

Instead, he stays put, seatbelt on and door closed, until they swing into a parking spot. He does his best to speed along the goodbyes and it’s working, Dan angling her body towards Matt’s truck, when Matt suddenly says, “Wait, is that Andrew’s bike?”

They all turn to follow his gaze and—yep, that is Andrew’s bike.

“I don’t know,” Neil says. “Don’t all motorcycles kind of look the same?” 

“No,” Matt scoffs. “They do not. And that is definitely Andrew’s.”

Neil glances instinctively towards his windows and sees, to his complete lack of surprise, that dim light is flickering through the blinds in his living room. The TV.

“He wasn’t here when we left,” Dan says, following his line of sight. “Was he?”

“No,” Neil says. “Anyway, I’m really tired, so—”

“Let’s go up,” Dan interrupts. “And say hi.” 

Neil slides his phone out of his pocket and sends a quick text as he trails them: _saw your bike, everyone’s coming up_. He takes his time going up the stairs to give Andrew time to prepare—that is, if he’s actually there. Eventually, though, he does have to step up to his door and unlock it; he turns, one hand on the knob, and surveys Matt and Dan’s bald curiosity. Jean, in contrast, looks tense and angry. 

Neil pushes the door open. 

Inside, Andrew is on the couch, in pajamas, his feet propped up on the ottoman, a pint of ice cream in his hand. He spares them a glance, nods in vague acknowledgement, and says, “Sup?”

“Andrew,” Jean says tightly. “What a fun surprise.” 

Andrew sucks a spoonful of ice cream into his mouth and slides it out with a pop. He eyes Jean, his face stunningly disinterested. “Gene,” he says pleasantly. “Cutting it a little close to curfew, aren’t we?”

Neil can barely hear the choked noise Matt makes over the snap of Jean’s posture into rigidity. 

“This was fun,” Neil says. “I’ll see you guys at school.”

Dan and Matt allow themselves to be shuffled out, but Jean resists. He keeps his eyes trained narrowly on Andrew, who’s generally ignoring him in favor of nestling deeper into Neil’s couch. Once Neil hears Matt’s truck start, he insistently pulls Jean out into the hall and closes the door. 

“What the fuck,” Jean says. “What is he doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Neil says, unconcerned. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Jean grits. “He knew we were going out tonight.” 

“So?”

“So, knowing that you were _on a date_ , he shows up and breaks into your apartment to be here when you get home?”

“He didn’t break in,” Neil corrects. “He has a key.”

“A key,” Jean repeats. 

“Yeah. You know, you’re supposed to give someone a spare key.”

“And you gave it to Andrew Minyard.”

Neil bristles. “I gave it to the person I would call if I needed help.”

“You must see what he’s doing,” Jean says stridently. “What is it Allison would call this? ‘Cock blocking’?”

“But he isn’t,” Neil points out. “There’s no cock to block.”

“And if there was? Do you think that would make him less overbearing?”

“Watch it,” Neil warns. “That’s not what this is.”

“Isn’t it?” He is here, in your apartment, uninvited, knowing you’re coming home from a date.” 

“He knows it’s fake,” Neil says. “He knows he wouldn’t be interrupting anything.”

Jean is very quiet for a moment, then he covers his eyes with his palm and lets out a long breath. “You said you wouldn’t tell him.”

“I said the opposite of that.” Neil is starting to get a little irked. “And it became relevant.”

“Relevant how?”

“Look,” Neil says, trying for patience. “I agreed to do this and I’m still in. I like you and I’m glad we’re hanging out more. But when I told you I couldn’t and wouldn’t lie to Andrew, I meant it. And he has a key in case I need him but he also has one in case he needs me. Or a place to be.”

“I understand,” Jean says flatly. “But I’m not sure you do.”

He’s not wrong, all things considered. Even Neil can admit that.

“Drive safe,” Neil says. “Let me know when you get home.”

Jean glares at the door again, then leans down and kisses the top of Neil’s head before taking the stairs at an angry clip. Neil feels a little like he’s just been chastised by an older sibling. He watches until he sees Jean reverse out of his spot and then he goes back inside, locking and chaining the door behind him. 

“Good date?” Andrew asks mildly. 

“Mostly,” Neil says. “But no more people this weekend.”

Andrew turns his attention back to the search for a perfect bite of his ice cream and says, “We could rent the second _Matrix_ movie.”

Neil feels an intense wave of relief. He wants nothing more than to turn off the lights and put his feet up and watch virtual reality white Jesus save the world. By the time he changes out of his excessively tight jeans and into pajama pants, Andrew has the movie queued up and a blanket puddled on his lap. Neil flops onto the couch and goes when Andrew tugs at his shirt, letting himself topple very carefully until he’s arranged against Andrew’s side, his head on Andrew’s shoulder. Andrew frees one hand to half-assedly shake the blanket partially on top of them with limited effect. Neil gives it his own lazy poke and then settles for tucking a corner under his feet. 

“Have you seen _The Princess Bride_?” Neil asks. 

“Yes,” Andrew says.

“Who would you be in it?” 

Andrew hums. “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

___

By 11:30 the next morning, Neil is pretty sure Andrew’s trying to drive him insane. He’d gotten up early to run and spent so much of it turning over everyone’s weird behavior in his mind that he’d lost track of time, realizing at some point that he was seeing the same trees over and over again. By the time he’d jogged back from his extra trip (trips?) around his route, Andrew had emerged from the guest room and was working on what looked like his second bowl of cereal.

Neil could taste the lingering sweetness of the sugared milk long after his mouth was rubbed a little raw by Andrew’s stubble. 

That’s usually the end of it. They’ve perfected getting each other worked up, going from lazy kisses to desperately, impossibly hard, and breaking apart because it’s the only way to stop. So, usually, Andrew will climb back off of Neil or push Neil out of his lap, or do whatever it takes to get a little space before either of them pass the point of no return. And then they do it all again.

This time, though, when Neil forces himself to tear his mouth away from Andrew’s and tips his head back, sucking in ragged breaths and willing himself not to hump Andrew’s thigh, Andrew doesn’t separate. He bites his way down Neil’s jaw until he can push his face against Neil’s shoulder, his chest heaving. Instead of the bittersweet relief of cooler air moving between them, Neil feels Andrew slide to the side, wedging his body into the space between Neil and the back of the couch. 

Neil opens his eyes and directs his sincerely felt “Fuck” towards the ceiling. 

He rolls a little onto his side to give Andrew space to prop his head up on his elbow and to feel that cooling rush against his back, but Andrew pulls him back once he’s settled, splaying his fingers out over Neil’s ribs and humming thoughtfully. 

“Cartoons?” Neil asks unsteadily. 

“ _Powerpuff Girls_.” 

The reach back over his head for the remote forces Neil to twist and arch. He almost fumbles the remote when Andrew’s hand rides the movement and slides lower, onto his stomach. 

11:27. Way too early to be this focused on the light circles Andrew is drawing around Neil’s belly button. 

Resolved, Neil opens the Hulu app on his TV and starts painstakingly typing in the name of the show. Once he finds the right square, he jabs the play button on the tiny remote until music fills the room.

Andrew’s pinky finger slips past the hem of Neil’s bunched-up shirt. Neil is achingly aware of that centimeter of flesh. He tries to turn his head back to kiss Andrew again but Andrew tsks and blocks him by pressing his mouth to the pulse point on Neil’s neck. 

“Watch the show,” Andrew says. His lips drag against the tender, sensitive skin under Neil’s jaw. 

Neil tries to focus on the cartoon children fighting the patriarchy, but it’s impossible. Andrew’s mouth keeps moving, traveling up to Neil’s ear while his fingertips trace intricate patterns over Neil’s ribs. Neil’s breath is embarrassingly shallow, a dead giveaway heaving under Andrew’s steady, wandering fingers. Get your shit together, he tells himself. This is winding down. Andrew is winding this down. 

Andrew’s tongue dips into the hollow of Neil’s collarbone and Neil gasps, arching into Andrew’s hand before he can think to stop himself. Andrew just hums a low, pleased noise against his skin. 

Neil is going to die. He is going to die of pretending like he’s not holding onto his dignity by the ragged edges of his fingernails. Deep breaths. One deep breath after another. 

On an exhale, Andrew’s hand splays over the space between Neil’s ribs. He can feel each individual finger like a brand. He wants to turn into Andrew’s body, push close and be enveloped by Andrew’s heat, share the taste of Andrew’s mouth. Andrew drags his lips up the length of Neil’s neck and onto his jaw. Neil can’t help but turn into it until Andrew can kiss him again, slowly, agonizingly slowly. Neil whimpers and tries to lick deeper into Andrew’s mouth but he’s already withdrawing, kissing the soft skin behind Neil’s ear and nuzzling into Neil’s hair. Andrew shifts the weight of his hand from his palm to his fingertips, teasingly light on Neil’s ribs again. 

“Andrew,” Neil says unevenly. 

“Neil.”

“Oh god.” Neil lets out a shaky laugh. “Asshole.”

“Hmm.”

This time, Neil realizes that Andrew is using his instinct to open up against him. The more Andrew works his mouth under Neil’s jaw, the more he tips his head back. The closer Andrew gets to the sensitive spot at the join of Neil’s neck and the slope of his shoulder, the further Neil turns his head towards the TV, trying to let Andrew kiss him anywhere. Everywhere. He does it anyway, his attention divided between the drag of Andrew’s slightly chapped bottom lip and the maddening journey of Andrew’s fingertips. 

Andrew nudges him away and tempts him back again and then again, keeping the kisses slow and deep and not nearly enough. Neil is so turned on that he feels feverish with it, shivery, permanently marked by the aimless paths Andrew’s hands take. The bright colors and cheerful noises of the TV become a kind of white noise, drowned out by the quiet slide of lips on skin and the rustling of Neil’s shirt under Andrew’s exploring touch.

He’s aching and desperate by the time the tease of Andrew’s lips at the side of his mouth have Neil turning back and pressing forward, finally, into a harder kiss. The tension humming through his body is so intense he feels like he must be floating outside of it, weightless and at the mercy of every twitch of Andrew’s fingers. 

When Andrew’s hand flattens and slides again, he doesn’t stop until his palm is pressed against Neil’s stomach and his fingers are pushed up to the last knuckle into the waistband of Neil’s pajama pants. He hums a quiet query into Neil’s mouth. Neil almost falls over himself saying “Yes, Andrew, fuck.” 

Two things happen almost simultaneously—Andrew works his free hand into Neil’s hair and pushes the other one down until he can wrap it tight around Neil’s dick. 

Neil knows the noise he makes should be humiliating, but he’s too focused on the rub of Andrew’s thumb through the precome spilling out of him to care. He tries to look down but the hand in his hair tightens and Andrew deepens the kiss, his fist twisting around Neil’s dick. Neil’s not sure that anything of him other than the places Andrew is touching actually exists—the curl of his toes and the clenching of his abs feel as distant as a memory. 

It only takes about 90 seconds of Andrew’s hand on him, twisting on the upstroke and fisting him tightly on the down before the tension spiraling through him winds as tight as it can and then releases explosively, sending electricity racing through his veins. He gasps, breaking away from Andrew just enough that Andrew can catch Neil’s bottom lip between his teeth. Heat pulses out of him but Andrew doesn’t stop—he catches every wave of pleasure that surges through Neil on his knuckles and drags it back down until the slide of his hand is impossibly slick. He keeps stroking until it’s too much and Neil, overstimulated, unconsciously tries to curl in on himself. 

Neil gasps out a strained, “Fuck,” over the rush of the effervescence in his blood and the rapid pounding of his own heartbeat.

“Do you—” he starts to ask, but Andrew shakes his head, pulling his hand out of Neil’s pajamas and wiping it on his shirt. 

“Not now,” Andrew says. “Be somewhere else.” 

Unquestioningly, Neil shifts to get up. The movement drags his hip against the hard length of Andrew that he hadn’t been able to feel before. Andrew curses and shoves at him with a hand planted on his back that hastens him to his feet. Neil knows better than to turn around. He heads straight to his bedroom to grab new clothes and then ducks into the bathroom to change. Before he gets anything done, he braces his hands against the counter and blinks at himself in the mirror. The wet, messy handprint on his shirt tells a clear story, but Neil thinks someone could read it on him even without that. His hair is pulled into haphazard spikes, his mouth is red and raw, and there are high, bright spots of color on his cheeks. This isn’t a look he’s ever seen on himself before. 

He can’t take seeing himself like this for very long, though, so he peels off his shirt and wets it to use as a washcloth, wiping cum off his skin and pubic hair. 

When he has new pajamas on and thinks he’s stalled enough, he noisily leaves, stopping to loudly open his closet door and toss the soiled clothes into the laundry hamper before venturing carefully out into the living room. By the time he gets there, Andrew is poking around in the fridge, fully dressed, looking not much less fucked than Neil did, though his expression is under his customary tight control. Neil wants to reach for him, but he knows better. 

“You have no food,” Andrew says. “When’s the last time you went to the grocery store?”

“Um,” Neil says. “When did I buy all that pasta?”

“Two weeks ago,” Andrew says, sighing as though he cannot fathom Neil’s stupidity. “You’re ridiculous. Get your fucking shoes.”

___

On Monday, Riko materializes at their lunch table and shoves himself into the handful of inches left beside Neil at the end of the bench. Neil can either be half in both Jean and Riko’s laps, or he can be all the way in Jean’s. It’s not a hard choice.

Jean makes room for him easily, sliding back a little so that there’s space for Neil between Jean’s chest and the edge of the table. He wraps an arm tight around Neil’s waist, keeping it tucked close enough that neither he nor Neil are actually touching Riko. Across the table, Andrew watches the scramble with a flat displeasure, his eyes following Jean’s hands and then flicking up, catching on something over Neil’s shoulder. Jean presses a kiss to Neil’s shoulder blade and shifts minutely towards Renee on their other side. 

Andrew’s eyes move to Riko. His voice is soaked in disdain when he says, “Well, there goes the neighborhood.”

“Ignore him,” Dan says. Her smile is bright and wary but not completely insincere. “You’re welcome here.”

Is he really, Neil wonders. Glancing from face to face at the table tells a different story. Only Aaron looks completely disinterested. Even Renee has the shadow of a furrow between her eyebrows. Allison looks like she’s about to whip out her phone and start recording, Matt’s posture is poised to move fast, and Kevin’s expression is harder than he’s ever seen it. Neil can feel the tension in Jean’s body at every point of contact. Andrew’s flat affect barely disguises his disgust. 

“Carry on,” Riko says into the silence. “Were you talking about the first game?”

“Yes,” Dan says firmly. “We were.”

He turns up again Tuesday. This time, Neil is on the bench between Allison and Jean, so it’s not his body that Riko casually batters to the side with his entry—it’s Katelyn’s. Aaron looks up and over at him, his expression visibly angry. 

“Don’t touch her,” Aaron says sharply. 

Riko’s pleasant demeanor cracks enough that some of his typical arrogant superiority leaks through. He looks down his nose at Aaron, his mouth tight, and says, “Why would I?”

“Anyway,” Dan says loudly. “We can’t let those Stingray assholes prank us again this year. Everyone stay on your toes.”

Wednesday, Andrew bee-lines to Neil as soon as he enters the lunchroom and cuts into line with him, ignoring the muttered complaints of the kids behind them. He piles shit up on Neil’s tray as they go and only allows Neil to pay after a brief but heated conversation with their eyes. 

Neil moves to walk around their table when they get there, but Andrew fists a hand in the back of his hoodie and steers him towards his and Kevin’s usual seats, waiting expectantly until Neil puts the tray down and steps over the bench. 

“That’s too many chips,” Kevin says, eying their tray with disdain. “You’re going to walk around with a backpack full of that shit. Everyone will hear you crinkle.” 

“Challenge accepted.” Andrew plucks a small bag of Fritos from the tray and rips it open, placing one curled chip very precisely onto his tongue. It crunches loudly when he starts chewing. 

The new arrangement means that there’s plenty of room for Riko to sit next to Jean, which he does with aplomb, either ignoring or indifferent to the quiet that keeps falling over the table when he arrives. 

“Jean,” Riko says pleasantly, “I saw they had your favorite sparkling water.”

Jean takes it from Riko’s hand, careful not to let their fingers touch, and sets it down beside the drink he’d already gotten for himself. 

“Now, Jean,” Andrew says. “Don’t be rude. What do we say when someone brings us a gift?”

“Merci,” Jean grits out. His eyes stay locked on Andrew’s placid, insincere smile, though, his expression icy. 

On Thursday, Riko is already at their table waiting when Neil trails Allison into the cafeteria—he’s alone other than Aaron, whose body language suggests that he has not registered Riko’s corporeal presence in any way.

“What the fuck,” Allison says, nodding in that direction. “Is this because of you?”

“What?” Neil asks. 

“Riko being up our asses all the time now. Is he into you too?”

“Too?”

“Josten, you have four guys basically fighting to plant their flags on you. You can’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“Well,” Neil says. “I mean.”

“ _Four guys_ ,” Allison stresses. “Four objectively hot guys. What did you _do_?”

“Four?”

Allison holds up a hand and ticks them off her fingers. “Jean, Riko, Kevin, and Andrew.”

“I don’t think—” Neil starts. What _does_ he think? “I didn’t do anything. I don’t think it’s really about me.”

“Sure, babe,” Allison says, her eyes rolling. “I’m sure most people look at you and don’t care at all if you pay attention to them.”

By the time they get to the table, Riko has been bracketed by Dan and Matt—herded into the center of the bench without a way to reach anyone else. There’s not a lot of room left, but Jean swings a leg over the bench and straddles it when he sees Neil approach, making space for him. He ends up with one knee hooked over Jean’s thigh and catches himself leaning closer to Jean’s chest to reduce his proximity to Riko. Across from them, Kevin stabs viciously at the food on his plate, bringing each chicken nugget to his mouth on a fork and chewing it with a tight, set jaw. 

Every time Andrew looks at him, Neil remembers the heat of his mouth and the tight grip of his fist when he’d pushed Neil against his front door that morning and jerked him off hard and fast. They’d been almost 10 minutes late picking Kevin up and five minutes late for the first bell. It had thrown Kevin into a funk that he hadn’t recovered from—and Riko’s presence definitely isn’t helping. 

“Game tomorrow,” Matt blurts into the strained silence. “Are we going to win it?”

The answers overlap in a discordant almost-simultaneity: Kevin’s “If you get your shit together,”; Dan’s “Definitely,”; Jean’s “Obviously,”; and Andrew’s “Who gives a fuck.”

The laughter that follows breaks some of the tension, but Neil is far too aware of the protective hand Jean has curled around his hip, the tightness in Kevin’s shoulders, and the restless jittering of Andrew’s knee under the table.

___

Thursday’s pre-game practice is, to Neil’s immense relief, fantastic. Everyone is incredibly focused. The ball never stops moving—it whips through the air at dangerous speeds and is snatched expertly from its arc by one racquet or another. Andrew only lets in one goal—Kevin’s—but Neil is so exhilarated by the performance that he doesn’t even mind that no one is scoring. He’s never seen Kevin go harder, either, battling tooth and nail to be the first to the ball whenever it’s anywhere near him.

It’s almost a game-day vibe, the determination everyone is bringing to it. Even the backliners show up with their game faces on—Jean usually spends more time on Kevin than he does on Riko, but this time he pushes himself and makes Riko fight for every step towards the goal. Matt, on Kevin, throws himself into the task; he’s dripping sweat and complaining about his sore toes by the time they break. 

“We’re going to win this,” Neil says confidently to Dan when she steps up beside him to get water. “Everyone is killing it.” 

“Everyone is killing each other,” Dan corrects. “But you’re right. If we bring this energy to the game tomorrow, they won’t have a chance.”

“Andrew is on fire,” Neil says. “And that’s against Kevin and Riko. The Stingray strikers aren’t nearly as good.” 

Dan nods thoughtfully, then jerks her chin towards Jean. “I didn’t know he had it in him.”

“Jean?” Neil asks. “He’s always been good.”

“Good, yes,” Dan says. “But he could be better if he didn’t go so easy in practices.”

“He’s not going easy today,” Neil says. A little glow of pride diffuses through his chest.

“No,” Dan says drily. “He isn’t. No one is. Matt and Kevin are on each other’s toes like they’re really bad at ballroom dancing.”

“Isn’t it great?” Neil asks, beaming. “Who could beat us when we play like this?”

“Teamwork could beat us,” Dan says. “There’s a lot of going for personal bests on the court today, but a more cohesive team could probably make that a weakness.”

Neil frowns at the now-empty court. He wants to protest but, if he looks at it through that lens, he can see Dan’s point. “We’ll come together,” he says hesitantly. “We’re battling each other because it’s a scrimmage. Tomorrow it’ll just be us against them.”

“Yes,” Dan says. “I’ll make sure of it.”

Neil tells himself to pay attention to that during the second half of practice, but he forgets it the moment Andrew slams the ball up the court towards Neil. He takes off, twisting and pushing onto his toes to catch it, and spins to fire it hard at the lower left corner of Renee’s goal. 

By the time they’ve put up equipment, showered, and helped Wymack make sure their gear is ready to go for tomorrow, most of the team has already left. Neil gives his hair one last rough toweling and tosses it into the hamper, stepping out to find only Andrew and Aaron still in the locker room, though Wymack’s office door is open and Neil can hear Kevin’s voice inside. 

“Finally,” Aaron says. “There’s not even that much of you to wash.”

“More than you,” Neil says. “But if it’s such an inconvenience, go ahead and walk.” 

Aaron shoots a disgruntled look towards Andrew, but his twin doesn’t acknowledge it or look up from his phone at all. “I want to go home,” Aaron says. “I have—homework.”

Neil’s pretty sure that ‘homework’ means ‘a three hour phone conversation with Katelyn,’ but who the fuck is he to judge. He steps over until the toes of his shoes nudge Andrew’s and taps at one to get his attention. “Ready?”

Andrew presses a few more buttons and then gets up, shoving his phone into his back pocket as he rises. Neil stops on their way out to shout goodbye to Kevin and Wymack, then follows Andrew out the side door of the gym and towards the parking lot. They make it about halfway before the door swings loudly open behind them and Jean jogs out, calling Neil’s name. 

“What does he want?” Andrew asks. 

“I don’t know.” 

The twins grudgingly stop walking—Aaron a few feet closer to the car than Neil and Andrew—and they all watch Jean approach. He jogs up, his damp hair flopping over his eyes, stopping close enough to wrap his arm over Neil’s shoulder and pull him into a hug. 

“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye,” Jean says in English, then switches immediately to French. “ _What did he say to you?_ ”

“Who?” 

Jean gives him a pointed look. Neil still doesn’t get it, so he shakes his head, confused. 

“ _His highness_ ,” Jean says. “ _He pulled you aside_.”

Neil searches his memory and only comes up with one thing Jean could be talking about: Riko coming over to briefly talk about strategic maneuvers during practice.

“Oh,” Neil says. “Nothing. It was nothing.” 

“Mon cœur,” Jean starts. “ _Nothing he does is—_.”

“We keep having to talk about your manners,” Andrew says flatly. “Care to share with the class?” 

Neil looks to him, surprised, and finds that Andrew is...annoyed. Visibly annoyed, relative to Andrew being visibly anything. His shoulders are high and tight, his mouth a straight line, both fists balled up at his sides. Even Jean seems to catch the mood, though all he does is step a little closer and nuzzle against the side of Neil’s head. 

“My apologies,” Jean says insincerely. “Am I meant to ask your permission before I say goodbye to my boyfriend?”

“You’re meant to not whisper secrets in other languages when you’re among friends,” Andrew corrects mockingly. “I guess what they say about the French being rude is true.”

Jean grits out an insult in French—literally, he calls Andrew a mussel full of shit—and locks his arm more tightly around Neil when he tries to step away. Neil discreetly tries to shrug it off, but he’s too much shorter. He doesn’t have the leverage. 

He can tell Andrew catches the movement, though, because his eyes narrow and he steps closer. “Do we need to have a conversation?” he asks coldly. 

“Do you have conversations?” Jean shoots back. “I wasn’t aware you were at all interested in what other people had to say.” 

“Hey,” Neil says, putting up a hand between them. “It’s not a big deal. Jean just asked what Riko wanted when he talked to me during practice.”

“Riko,” Andrew spits, disgusted. “We have you to thank for him, too, don’t we, Valjean?”

The tension in Jean’s body ramps up, but when Neil looks at him, he sees only guilt on Jean’s face. Jean opens his mouth, closes it again, and mutters another curse in French. 

“That’s what I thought,” Andrew says. “Fuck off. We’re leaving.” 

This time, when Neil steps back, Jean lets him go. He’s frowning, though, and looks like he wants to say something else—Neil would rather he didn’t, so he takes another step back and tells Jean, firmly, “I’ll call you later.” 

“ _If he lets you_ ,” Jean says. 

Andrew takes another step forward, his body radiating the desire to stab something. To stab Jean in particular. Neil, very cautiously, pinches Andrew’s sleeve between his fingers and tugs. There’s a long moment of bitter eye contact before Andrew looks away from Jean and relaxes his shoulders.

“Food?” Neil asks hopefully. “I’m starving.” 

Aaron’s mild, “I could eat,” is a bit of a shock—Neil had forgotten he was standing there. Avid interest is written in broad strokes on Aaron’s face, which is the last fucking thing Neil needs. 

The change in subject, though, that he can work with. 

“Great,” Neil says, tugging gently at Andrew’s sleeve again. “You pick, Andrew drives, I’ll pay.”

“Paying for shit isn’t a personality trait,” Aaron says without any real heat. “But at least it makes you a tiny bit less useless.” 

“Useless?” Neil scoffs. “You’re redundant. Anything you can do, Andrew can do better.” 

“Oh, really?” Aaron says. “He’s the one you’d call for _tact_?”

Neil laughs. “I said anything _you_ could do. Tell me _one time_ you’ve spared a _single feeling_ in conversation.”

When he glances back over his shoulder, Jean is almost back to the gym. Andrew’s posture is looser, his fists unclenched. The keys swing from his middle finger easily, clanging metallically as they walk.

Aaron’s eyes are bright and thoughtful as he looks between them. The bickering is a bid to distract Andrew and they’re in it together—Neil is conscious of that and he knows Aaron is, too. 

Aaron smirks at him with something Neil thinks looks a lot like acknowledgment, and says, “Says the guy who hasn’t met a button he doesn’t want to push.” 

“Children,” Andrew says. “Stop arguing and get in the car.” 

“Shotgun,” Neil says, smiling widely at Aaron. “You shouldn’t be in the front seat anyway. It’s too dangerous for people your size.”

“ _Three inches_ ,” Aaron says indignantly. “It’s the height difference of a salt shaker.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allison throws a party. Neil hates his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this 9k+ word chapter. Neil and I are very tired now.
> 
> TW for one guy using homophobic and ableist language.

_”The Exy team is throwing a party at Neil Josten’s after the game tonight.”_

_“Oh my god. Are we invited?”_

_“If I say no, is that going to stop you from going?”_

_“Absolutely not.”_

___

After they absolutely crush the Stingrays, Neil says his temporary goodbyes to the rest of the team and climbs into Allison’s convertible. By the time they get to his apartment, his hair is whipped dry and his skin feels tender from the abrasion of the wind. 

He throws himself into the shower and obediently works himself into the clothes Allison had laid out for him earlier; he doesn’t think there’s any material difference between these particular jeans and any other pair he has in his closet, but it’s not like he wants to argue with Allison about it. Life is short. Why pick fights you know you can’t win?

Clothed, and having made a good faith effort at putting product in his hair, he makes his way out to his living room to find that Allison has turned a handful of grocery bags into a party. He hadn’t asked what was in the bags when she’d dropped them off after school, but he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that they contained a number of liquor bottles in various stages of emptiness, along with what seems like 500 red plastic cups, a few 2-liters, a case of beer, and an alarmingly large box of the heaviest duty black trash bags. 

“Gird your loins,” Allison says cheerfully. She twists one of the bottles of vodka until it’s aligned in a way she’s happy with, then beams at him. “And hide your valuables.”

“What valuables?” Neil asks. 

He takes it as the warning it is, though, and gets to work. A quick run-through of the living room nets him his laptop, one of Andrew’s armbands, Neil’s favorite pair of running shoes, his history notebook, and Andrew’s sunglasses. In the bathroom, he grabs both toothbrushes and the scar cream. In the guest room, he pulls some of Andrew’s clothes out from under the bed and tosses them in the laundry basket, carefully folding the clean stuff in the closet on top of it. He grabs Andrew’s book, his charger, the watch he took off weeks ago and hasn’t put back on, and Andrew’s boots (one of which he finds placed neatly on the top shelf of the closet, the other, wedged halfway behind the dresser). He hauls it all to his bedroom, drops in the corner, and considers it. A lightbulb goes off and he heads to the kitchen, grabbing Andrew’s cereal from the cabinet and adding that to the basket. 

He locks the door with the key when he leaves, testing the knob a few times to make sure no one can get in. He can hear voices from the hallway, so he’s not surprised when he walks back into his living room and sees Dan and Matt there, as squeaky clean and well-groomed as Allison. 

“Neil,” Matt exclaims, beaming widely. “Just the man I was looking for.”

“Uh oh,” Neil says. “That doesn’t usually go well for me.”

He waits so that Matt can cross the living room and plant his hands on Neil’s shoulders, turning him and marching them both towards the dining table. They’ve set up a little triangle of red solo cups and Neil thinks, ah, yes, this thing. Of course. He hears the door open behind him and looks over his shoulder to see Aaron and Kevin following Andrew in, but Matt keeps them moving until the others are out of his sight.

“I need to see if you have any skills,” Matt explains. “I’m looking for a ringer.”

“I don’t drink,” Neil reminds him. 

“If you’re good enough, you won’t have to.”

At first, he isn’t. But he gets into it, trying to work out the right angles and speed and height and quirk of his wrist, aiming and wincing when the ball hits the rim and ricochets away or threatens to slide a cup too far to the side. The dark wood of the table glistens with splashes of the fruit punch Neil refuses to drink. There’s chattering and the occasional knock, but Matt blocks most of his view with his bulk at the other end of the table. Neil finally lands a ball in each and every one of the cups and throws his arms up in victory, laughing when Matt picks him up to spin him. 

“Boyd,” a voice says. “Unhand my man.”

“Jean,” Matt says brightly. He sets Neil carefully onto his feet and beams in welcome. “Beer pong. Are you any good?” 

Jean shakes his head, but Neil spots the little gleam in his eye that he gets whenever he’s realized he has one up on someone.

“He’s lying,” Neil says. He reaches for Jean’s hand to pull him in for a brief side hug—and, not incidentally, to replace himself with Jean so he can go grab a drink. Before he makes his move to leave, he stands on his toes to kiss Jean’s cheek, whispering, “Better you than me,” against his ear.

“Were you going to hustle me?” Matt asks. “You were, weren’t you?” 

“Can one hustle at beer pong?” Jean muses. “Isn’t the true purpose of it to drink?”

“Yes. Drinks,” Neil agrees. “Do you guys want anything?”

Instead of moving into the kitchen with their requests fresh in his mind, he heads towards the living room, where he can see Allison leaning out onto the balcony to shout at someone on the lawn outside. One shiny, lipstick-red shoe hooked around the doorframe keeps her balanced. “No,” she yells downwards. “It’s apartment _209_.” 

“It’s 215,” Neil says when she turns around. Her foot slips a little, so he quickly grabs for her arm to keep her upright.

“Yeah, I know,” she says, hopping back over the threshold. “But fuck that guy. He’s a dick.”

“Then why is he here?” Neil asks. He gestures helplessly around his living room at the trickle of unfamiliar faces. “Why are any of these people here?” 

“It’s a party,” she says, smoothing down the front of his shirt. The shirt she’d insisted he wear. “And we are awesome. Why wouldn’t people want to hang with us?”

“It’s more that I don’t want to hang—” Neil starts, but Allison cuts him off halfway through to wave her fingers at someone else across the room. 

“Gotta go, babe,” she says, patting him on the cheek. “Try to have fun.” 

Sure. Fun. How could having too many people he barely knows crammed into his apartment with him be anything other than fun? He surveys the room. He can see the team, of course—or, at least, most of them. Dan has joined Matt in the dining room, where Matt is playing a couple of the sophomores. Aaron is still lurking with Kevin and Andrew, looking surly and disappointed. Waiting on Katelyn to show up so he can casually disappear, Neil assumes. He meets Andrew’s eyes and smiles when Andrew lifts an eyebrow at him over the rim of his cup. There are just… a bunch more people here. Some preppy idiot is trying to cram into one of the armchairs with his two friends, there are a couple of people on the balcony, a group of four sitting on the floor next to the TV, and what looks like a small cluster around the front door greeting each other. About sixteen people, he thinks, not including the rest of the team. 

He starts to head towards them then, belatedly, he remembers the drinks. There’s some douchebag standing on top of his ottoman with grimy Converse on, so Neil stops to drag him back down to the floor. He spins the guy towards his friends and, when they part, catches sight of Jean at the island, looking uncomfortable. Dodging a couple of other people heading for the couch gives Neil a clearer look; he’s not alone—Riko is with him, blocking any easy, polite exit Jean might make and adding insult to injury by leaning in close, the look on his face smug. Jean’s posture is stiff and straight, his body tilting away but not nearly enough. Neil can read the politeness math on Jean’s face as he wobbles between avoidance and holding his ground.

This is literally the reason Jean asked him to fake date. He just hadn’t seen it in quite this much action before.

The kids on the floor are maybe from the theater program—Neil has to step over their outstretched legs. He catches something about _Oscar Wilde_ and _90210_ as he picks his way through, but they seem largely unaffected by the intrusion. 

“It’s nice to be able to live alone,” Riko is saying as Neil comes up behind him. “You must spend quite a bit of time here.”

“So much,” Neil says sunnily. He wedges between them with the precision of a very sharp axe and leans his back against Jean’s chest, pulling Jean’s arm around him. Jean tangles his fingers in Neil’s shirt and pulls him in tighter, wearing him like a shield. Jean’s slow exhalation ruffles Neil’s hair. It sounds relieved.

“Hey, Riko. Thanks for coming.” 

“Neil,” Riko says. His smile is pinched around the edges. 

“Sorry to interrupt,” Neil says insincerely. “But I need to see Jean in my bedroom. Urgently.” 

“To celebrate, I assume,” Riko says. “Should we turn up the music?” 

“Good idea,” Neil says. “We can get pretty loud.” He laces his fingers with Jean’s and tugs him away, stopping at the speaker to conspicuously crank the volume up a few levels. 

It’s still not loud enough to drown out the whistling and catcalls that follow them around the corner to his bedroom. He keeps a hold on Jean’s hand and digs around in his pocket for the keys. Jean radiates heat and anxiety behind him, crowded close against Neil’s back.

“Thank you,” Jean says, once they’re inside and the door is locked. He flops onto Neil’s bed and spreads his limbs. “He’s just so…”

Neil waits.

“Hard to say no to,” Jean finishes after a few moments. 

“That’s what makes it fun,” Neil says. “I don’t think he hears it much. It’s good for his personal development.”

Jean rolls his head to the side and gives Neil a wry look. 

“What do you think he’s going to do if you tell him to fuck off?” Neil asks.

Jean doesn’t answer. The hush in the room is shadowed by the low thump of music from the rest of the apartment; Neil is impatient for this to be over, but in no hurry to go back to the party. Hovering in the balance feels shitty, so he occupies himself with picking the clothes up off of his bedroom floor and transferring them to his desk in a tidier pile. 

“Neil,” Jean says. “Is that Andrew’s?” 

Neil looks down at his hands. A couple of his hoodies are wadded up in one hand, his letterman’s jacket half draped over the other. He tosses the hoodies towards his desk chair and shakes out the jacket: Minyard, 03.

“Guess so,” he says. He shakes it out again and hangs it carefully on the back of the chair. 

“Why?” 

“Why what?”

“Why is Andrew’s letterman’s jacket in your bedroom?”

“I must have grabbed it from his room earlier,” Neil says, shrugging. 

“His room?”

“The guest room,” Neil clarifies. “I didn’t want people messing with his things.” 

“Neil. Does Andrew live here?”

Not this again. “He doesn’t live here,” Neil says with what he hopes is patience but is probably actually irritation. “But sometimes he stays over. Weren’t we talking about Riko?”

Jean’s expression drops from suspicious into pained. “No talking about Riko,” he says. “Let’s go back out there and have a good time.”

Alternately, Neil thinks, he could text Andrew and they could lock themselves in here and make out and watch dumb shit on Neil’s laptop. He follows Jean out with a sigh, though, locking the door again behind him and testing the knob several times before he’s satisfied. 

There’s more catcalling when they emerge. A lot more. Because there are a lot more people in his apartment now. He takes it in, trying to count, but gets lost somewhere in the mid-twenties. Jean’s hand ghosts against his back; he mumbles something about drinks and Neil nods, absently, and wanders away to look for Andrew. There’s a flash of dark gold on the couch, but it is, disappointingly, Aaron who glares up at him when he pushes his way into the group.

“Ew,” Neil says. “Wrong twin.”

“Get lost,” Aaron says. “Who even invited you.” 

“I honestly don’t know,” Neil says.

“If you’re stalking Andrew, I think he and Kevin are in the back talking about how annoying you are.” 

Neil snorts but ignores him in favor of turning his attention to Katelyn, who is cuddled up against Aaron’s side. He smiles warmly. “I’m glad you could make it,” he tells her. “I know Andrew wanted to say hi. I’ll go get him for you.”

He barely jumps back in time to avoid the kick Aaron aims at his knee. “I know where you sleep, Josten.” 

“Oh no,” Neil says blandly. “Are you going to come beat me to death with your tiny fists?” 

“Go,” Katelyn laughs. “Or at least make popcorn if you’re going to put on a show.” 

Neil grins at her, then turns his attention back to Aaron, raising his middle finger very deliberately. Aaron kicks half-heartedly at his knees again, but Neil hops back, bumping hard into someone who immediately squeals and starts cursing about their drink. Jean is probably coming back with theirs soon, so Neil takes a cunning, circuitous route through the loose groupings of people until he can slide around the corner into the hallway and head to the guest room at the end. There are a couple of girls hovering around the partially open door, alternately giggling and trying to peek through the opening. 

Sure enough, Kevin, Andrew, and Renee are inside. He slides through the gap in the door and closes it behind him, relishing the cooler, thinner air of a room with an acceptable number of people in it. Andrew, posted close to the door and casually cleaning beneath his fingernails with the tip of his knife, slides over to give Neil room to lean against the dresser beside him. Guard duty, Neil thinks. Maybe he should lock them in and ride out the party here. 

On the bed, Renee has found a corner to sit on that isn’t consumed with the starfish shape of Kevin’s body. He’s splayed sideways, dramatically, one foot on a pillow and the other peeking over the edge of the bed.

“Are we hiding?” Neil asks. 

“A bit,” Renee says. 

“Kevin’s drinking away his sorrows,” Andrew says, scrutinizing his nails. “Mostly you.” 

“Me?” Neil asks, squinting. “I’m your sorrows?” 

Kevin hefts himself up onto one elbow and points the mouth of a bottle at him. “Do you know what you’ve done?” 

“Is this a trick question?” Neil asks. He’s quietly gratified when Andrew snorts in amusement and, finally, sheathes his knife. 

“Riko,” Kevin says, enunciating very clearly. “He’s here because of you.”

“Because of _me_?” 

“He wants to take you away from me.” 

Baffled, Neil blinks from Kevin to Renee to Andrew. He expects to see dismissal or disgust at the histrionics, but it’s not there. Andrew just meets his eyes steadily, his expression blank. There’s not a speck of refutation anywhere Neil can see. 

He turns back to Kevin and says, with every pale fragment of sincerity in his body, “What?” 

“Do you have any idea how much time I’ve spent shielding you from his manipulative bullshit?”

“I—” Neil starts, frowning. “No?”

Kevin flops back down. A little of the liquid in his bottle splashes out over the rim, the droplets darkening the comforter around his hand in bizarre constellations. “He’s been ‘helping’ me into second place since little leagues,” Kevin says bitterly. “And you’re just signing up to let him do that to you. To let him do it to _me_ again. Because he’s the best. And I’ll never be.”

Everything seems to slow to a crawl. The rise and fall of Kevin’s chest is measured, but when Neil tries to match his breathing, he feels like he’s suffocating. Distantly, he hears the giggling from the hallway, the thump of music and anguished screams of defeat from the living room. He looks to Renee, who meets his eyes with calm sympathy; Andrew, when Neil looks his way, simply shrugs. Everything snaps back into real time. 

“No,” Neil says sharply. “He isn’t. You are. And I won’t let him do that. Fuck that guy.”

Kevin’s laugh cracks and shatters into hiccups. More astronomy spreads across the bedding as the bottle shakes. 

“I’m serious, Kev,” Neil says, frowning. “I can go tell him to fuck off right now.”

“Sure,” Kevin says. “I’m sure he’ll be very cool. He won’t make it about me being pathetic and jealous at all.” 

Neil opens and then shuts his mouth. He pokes viciously at his mind, trying to think of a way to fix this for Kevin, to get rid of Riko for him and for Jean, to reset everything the way it was a month ago—well, maybe not everything. Most things. Non-Andew things. 

He comes up blank.

It’s Andrew’s voice that breaks the heavy silence. “Enough self-pity,” he says. He leans over and slaps the side of Kevin’s shoe hard enough that his foot falls off the bed. “Go get laid. I’ll handle Riko.” 

“Maybe we’ll get a little food first,” Renee says, amused. “And some water. And then we can think about sex.” 

Kevin allows Renee to peel him off the bed, draping an arm around her shoulders for what is probably unnecessary support as he wobbles exaggeratedly towards the door, whining huskily about vodka and tacos.

Neil says, “Kevin,” frowning, but Andrew tugs at his sleeve and shakes his head when Neil turns to look at him. He falls quiet, waiting until Kevin is gone to speak.

“Is that what Riko’s doing?” Neil asks. “Trying to take me away from Kevin?”

“Probably,” Andrew says. “Can he?” 

“No,” Neil says firmly. “I mean, I don’t know that I’m Kevin’s to be taken, but—” his argument collapses at the slightest lift of Andrew’s eyebrows and he sighs, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Okay.” Neil is resolute. “That’s it. I’m kicking everyone out. This is the worst night of my life.”

“I highly doubt that.” 

“It’s pretty close,” Neil says bitterly. He drops his hands and shoves his fingers into his pockets, eying Andrew with a new wave of hope. ”Can I kiss you?”

Andrew shakes his head but the corner of his mouth is quirked upwards and there’s a fondness in the low cast of his eyelashes. “You’re an idiot,” he says. 

Neil nods his emphatic agreement. He’s smiling when Andrew pulls him in and kisses him. He’d been expecting an indulgent peck, but Andrew’s mouth ghosts slowly over his, his body close, his hand trailing down Neil’s ribs to splay over his lower back. Neil opens for Andrew eagerly, tasting the sparkling, tropical sweetness of whatever he’s been drinking. 

They really could just...go. This isn’t actually Neil’s party, it’s Allison’s. His bedroom door is locked—they could close themselves up in it or they could get on Andrew’s motorcycle and drive to the lake, or they could walk the trails around Neil’s apartment and find a place to make out in the grass or they could—-

“ _Open up_ ,” someone yells from the hallway. “I’m going to _shit myself_ if you don’t open this door right now!”

Neil closes his eyes against his cruel reality. 

“Duty calls,” Andrew says, amused. He presses close for another quick kiss and then pushes Neil away, towards the hallway. 

“I hate my life,” Neil says mournfully. 

“ _Seriously_ ,” the strident voice continues. “ _Open the fucking door_!”

Two minutes later, he’s picked open the lock on the bathroom door and is plastered to the back of it, staring dumbly at the red-faced, tear-streaked girl sitting on the toilet lid, surrounded by soggy heaps of toilet paper. 

“Um,” Neil says. “Do you need...help?”

“You have a boyfriend, right?” the girl sobs. 

“Uh, yes. I do.” 

“So you get it,” she says, sniffling. 

“Get what?”

“It’s _Ashleigh_.” She grabs another wad of toilet paper off the roll and pushes her whole face into it, her shoulders heaving. “She _knows_ I’m, like, really into Sydney? And, like, when it’s just us she’s always talking about how pretty I am and how Sydney would be stupid not to like me, but then every time she’s actually around, like, she’s just flirting with her _all the time_ , you know? Like, she’ll make some comment about how good she looks and then she’ll turn and wink at me, like she’s setting me up to score or something, you know? But what am I actually supposed to _do_ after that? Be like, yes, Sydney, I will see Ashleigh’s nice ass and raise your beautiful eyes?”

Neil is completely lost. He looks towards the mirror for help, but he sees only his own weary, baffled face. He thinks he gets the gist of this story, but there are so many _she_ s to keep track of that he’s not sure he understood to whom even half of them were supposed to be pointing.

He just has to get this girl out of the bathroom before that angry guy outside ruins Neil’s carpet. 

He says, “Right, so—” 

“And it’s just, like, if she likes Syd, she should just _tell me_ , you know? We don’t have to fight over a girl. But then she treats me like I’m crazy when I _act_ like we’re maybe fighting over a girl? Because she’s just _so_ supportive and _so_ invested in our relationship and I’m being _so_ unfair when I say, like, hey maybe you could not sensually paint my crush’s toenails, you know?”

“You know what I think?” Neil interrupts, bracing himself against another gush of crying and gossip and going on the offensive. “I think you should go out there and tell the girl that you like her and you think you should kiss, but only if she wants to.” 

“Is that what you did?” She sniffles pathetically. “Your boyfriend is, like, really hot.” 

Neil thinks back to standing in his kitchen, the sound of _Teen Titans_ playing in the background, telling Andrew that he’d changed things for Neil that no one ever had before. 

“Yes,” he says firmly. “It is. Go tell her.” 

The smile the girl directs at him is wobbly but brilliant. She tears another length of toilet paper off the roll and dabs at her face, smearing more of her battle-worn mascara onto her cheeks. She stands, straightens her shoulders, and says, “I’m gonna do it right now.”

“Wait,” Neil says. “I mean, definitely do it. But go see Allison first. Tell her I sent you to, uh, I think she says ‘maximize your hotness.’”

“I will,” she says. Neil moves to open the door for them but she moves too fast, flinging herself at him and wrapping her arms tightly around his neck. He pats her awkwardly on the back. The words are muffled into his shoulder, but Neil is pretty sure she says, “Thank you, Neil Josten. You’re the _best_.” 

The screamer, who has hopefully _not_ shit his pants yet, pushes aggressively past them and into the bathroom as soon as the door cracks open, slamming it so hard behind him that the wall shakes. There are a couple of people lingering just beyond the door, forming an awkward, uneven sort of queue. Neil allows himself one long moment to tip his forehead against the wall and breathe, but then he pushes himself upright and ventures back into the living room. 

There are more bodies than there were before. Too many for Neil to count. Realistically, he knows it can only be so many because his apartment is only so big, but it’s a solid enough mass that he sincerely considers, again, getting into his car and driving away. He could go to Andrew’s house. Nicky would welcome him with open arms. 

He still hasn’t had a drink, alcohol or no alcohol. It would have been smart to hoard some water and snacks in his bedroom, but “being smart” is something Neil is rarely accused of. He squeezes through the throngs between him and the kitchen, smiling vaguely in the direction of the “great game!”s and shoulder-pats he gets from people he doesn’t care enough to engage with. The kitchen is close, its harsh light drawing him in like a moth, but he’s pulled from his slow progress by the hand that plucks him out of the crowd and deposits him at the head of the dining table, right next to Matt. 

“My secret weapon!” Matt says too loudly. “I need you.”

“How drunk are you?” Neil asks skeptically. 

“None,” Matt says. “I’ve barely had any drink.”

“I was gonna—” Neil says, gesturing towards the kitchen. “Maybe you should take a break.”

“He’s wasted,” one of the guys at the other end of the table crows, smirking. “He’s really bad at this.”

Well, fuck that guy. Neil turns on him, the sharpness of his smile spreading across his face like ice. “Let’s play,” he says.

He takes the guy’s cocky, expansive gesture as a yes and holds out his hand for Matt to deposit the ball into. He tests the weight of one in his hand, rehearses the wrist movement, crouches to eye the surface of the table at its level, then stands up, still smiling. He tosses the ball lightly, easily, a smooth arc. It plops right into the cup he’d intended, earning him first play. 

His streak ends at four, but the other team doesn’t land a single ball. By the time they finish, all but one of his cups are untouched and the other team is glaring down at their last two, a ball bobbing cheerfully in each. 

“Yes!” Matt shouts, hands in the air, feet shuffling in a clumsy victory dance. “My fucking hero.”

Neil can’t see Dan through the crowd. Actually, he can’t see anyone through the crowd; he drags one of the dining room chairs out and climbs onto it, fisting his hand in the shoulder of Matt’s shirt so he can’t go anywhere. From up here he can get a better sense of the density of bodies—he’d say maybe 35 or 40. It doesn’t seem like it should be a huge number, but it’s a fucking huge number when it’s his apartment.

“Oh, you’re so tall,” Matt says happily. He stumbles a little into Neil’s grip, winding his arms around Neil’s ribs and rubbing his smoothly-shaven face against Neil’s shirt. “It _is_ nice.” 

“Uh huh,” Neil says. He sets his hand to absently petting Matt’s hair and keeps scanning until he finally gets a look at Dan’s tight, intricate braids at the kitchen counter. “Hey, Matt, I’m really thirsty.”

“Unaccpectable,” Matt says. “I will make you one right now. I got you, Neil. You’re my boy.”

Neil tries to channel Andrew’s shark-like ability to cut through a crowd, but he doesn’t have the anti-social aerodynamics. He not-so-gently pushes people out of his way to make room for Matt until he can deliver him into Dan’s arms. 

“Dan,” Matt exclaims. “Danielle. Captain. My beautiful Captain Dan. Did you see Neil dominate? It was very hot. He defended my honor.”

“I didn’t,” she answers, amused. “Let’s get some water in you.” 

Neil reaches over the peninsula and grabs a couple of bottles of water, handing one to Dan before twisting off the lid on his own and downing half of it in a single sip. His parched mouth absorbs it so quickly he’s thirsty again immediately. 

“It’s really crowded in here,” Neil says, glaring at the bodies around them. “Who are these people?”

“People who heard there was a party with no supervision,” she says. “Opportunists.” 

“What time is it?” Neil asks, a little desperately. “It must be way past everyone’s curfews by now.”

“It’s 10:30,” she says. “Still early.”

“No way,” Neil says. “Not possible.” When he digs his phone out of his pocket, though—there it is. 10:31pm. He’d gotten out of the shower at 9:00. He’d have put money on it being well past midnight. 

Sourly, he gulps down the last half of his water and reaches over the counter for another one. When he shifts backwards again, he presses against a familiar, solid warmth. Andrew. 

“Not having fun?” Andrews asks mockingly. “It’s the party of the year.” 

Neil glares half-heartedly, but he can feel some of the tension leaking from his body. He lets himself lean into it, borrowing Andrew’s stability and suppressing a shiver when he feels fingertips slip discreetly under his shirt. 

“Neil has to be here,” Dan says, propping her slyly grinning face on her palm. “What’s your excuse?”

Andrew’s fingers spread out across Neil’s ribs, cool from the cup he’s been holding but still sparking against Neil’s skin like matches. 

“Babysitting,” Andrew says mildly. “No one bothered to child-proof this party.”

Neil knows that the movement of Andrew’s hand is hidden by the shadow of the counter, that it’s tucked up close where no one can see it, but a little thrill still runs through him when Andrew’s palm flattens against his hip, fingers dipping just barely under the waistband of Neil’s jeans. He can’t help it—his eyes fall closed and he leans back more, letting the play of Andrew’s fingers and the warm, wild weight of his presence push everything else away. 

He tunes back in when he hears his name. 

“What?” 

“You still with us?” Dan asks. 

“Uh,” Neil says. “Yes. Just a little tired. Actually, I—I have something I wanted to show Andrew.” 

“Oh?” Andrew asks. He takes a sip from his cup casually, like he has no idea what his other hand is doing. “Now?”

“Yes,” Neil says. “Now.”

“Fine,” Andrew says, shrugging. He frees his hand from Neil’s clothes and uses it to gesture. “If you’ll stop complaining about it.”

This time, there aren’t catcalls. No one gives them a second look as Andrew slices through with precision, towing Neil behind him by the belt loop. The few people in the hallway seem too preoccupied to notice when Andrew crowds him against the wall and works his hand into Neil’s pocket to fish out the keys. 

Or, at least, Neil doesn’t notice if they do. The promise of Andrew—his hands, his mouth, the weight of him, the pressure of his thigh between Neil’s legs, the drag of his teeth against Neil’s neck, the grip of his fingers when he laces their hands together above Neil’s head—pushes everything else out of his mind. 

Andrew gets the door open and steps back to push Neil in first, shutting and locking it behind him. He tosses the keys somewhere towards the desk and wraps a hand around the back of Neil’s neck, pulling him into a kiss that has him stumbling over his feet when Andrew starts backing him towards the bed. There’s a graceless flurry of limbs while they kick off shoes and Andrew peels out of his hoodie and they climb roughly center on the bed and then Andrew is finally settling on top of Neil, his hair mussed from the hoodie, smelling like laundry soap and aftershave. 

“Where?” Neil asks, his hands hovering at his sides. 

“Waist up,” Andrew says. He kisses Neil’s mouth, his chin, drags parted lips down Neil’s neck until he tips his head back and gives Andrew access to all that vulnerable skin. 

Neil savors the play of muscle under thin cotton when he spreads his hands out on Andrew’s back, tracing the hard slope of his sides and gasping when Andrew’s mouth locks onto his skin with a pressure Neil knows will leave a mark. 

Andrew pushes up onto his palms for a little distance, surveying Neil with something that might be disapproval if it wasn’t so hungry. “Look at you,” Andrew says. “You’re already a mess.” 

“Yes,” Neil agrees. He slides his hands up higher, trying to tug Andrew back down, but doesn’t get very far. 

“Can you be quiet?” Andrew asks. 

“Probably not.”

He knows he doesn’t imagine the glow that rises in Andrew’s eyes, keeping time with the smug half-smile his mouth lifts into. “Good. Say my name.”

“An—” Neil starts, obediently, but chokes on it when Andrew rolls his hips down hard, grinding them together. “Fuck, Andrew.” 

Probably the music is too loud for anyone to hear them. Probably. He still tries to stifle most of the noise against Andrew’s mouth, but he knows the broken, desperate sounds he makes when Andrew finally works Neil’s jeans down and jerks him off will carry further than he’d like them to.

He’s pushing into Andrew’s hand shamelessly, so close, and remembers to pull his shirt up higher only when the first waves of his orgasm hits him. He thinks, _Allison will kill me if I change shirts_ and then he doesn’t think anything at all. 

After, when Andrew is still hard and panting, grinding against Neil’s thigh in rough, jerky circles, Neil hooks his hands safely above them and says, “What do you want me to do?”

“Just shut up,” Andrew says. “And don’t—don’t touch me.”

“Yes,” Neil says. “Okay. I won’t.” 

He doesn’t. He keeps his hands safely up and his eyes closed, kissing Andrew blindly when he slides their mouths together but not chasing him when he pulls away. Andrew’s breath gets faster and louder. His knuckles rub tracks through the cum still streaked on Neil’s stomach—then he goes still, gasping, “Neil, fuck, _fuck_ ” as fresh heat lands in thick lines against Neil’s skin. 

Andrew catches his breath with his forehead pressed tightly to Neil’s. Neil keeps his eyes closed, keeps his hands still, until Andrew moves and kisses his cheekbone, then the corner of his mouth. 

Neil doesn’t open his eyes until he hears Andrew’s zipper slide closed and a wad of fabric lands on his stomach. He blinks against the soft light of his bedside lamp and looks down to survey the damage once his vision has cleared. 

“I’m going to need a new shirt,” he says resignedly, trying to wipe up the mess without smearing it everywhere. 

“So?” Andrew asks. He’s up, his back turned to Neil, poking at the contents of the laundry basket Neil had hidden here earlier. 

“So Allison made me wear this one. She’ll notice.”

“Tell her the truth. It’s covered in jizz.” 

Neil grimaces. “I’ll tell her someone threw up on it.”

“Much better,” Andrew says, amused. “Here.”

He tosses something at the bed and Neil only just gets his hands up in time to catch it before it hits him in the face. When he shakes it out, he sees that it’s Andrew’s favorite, well-worn Joy Division shirt. 

Neil does not have nearly enough chill to pretend that it’s not the best thing that’s happened to him at this party. Second best. Best adjacent. He sits up so he can peel out of his dirty shirt and pull Andrew’s on. Once it’s on, he runs his palm over the faded, peeling lines he’s more accustomed to tracing against Andrew’s chest. 

“Can we just stay in here?” Neil asks hopefully.

Andrew shrugs. “Yes.” 

Neil sits in that for a minute, basking in the steady gaze Andrew levels at him, then gives up on the fantasy and sighs, his shoulders slumping. 

“That’s what I thought,” Andrew says, amused. He offers Neil a hand off the bed, though, and lets Neil push close, lets Neil twine their fingers together, lets Neil duck and kiss the side of his neck. 

“I wish I didn’t hate the cops,” Neil sighs. “I’d call them myself.” 

Before Andrew can mock him for that, though, there’s a series of sharp knocks on the door. 

“Neil?” Jean’s voice calls. “Are you in there?”

Andrew hums and turns his head enough to kiss behind Neil’s ear. “Oh no,” he says blandly. “Your boyfriend has caught us.”

Jean looks poised to speak when Neil flips the lock and swings the door open, but his mouth closes with a snap when he gets a good look at the room. Neil looks guiltily behind him at the rumpled bed, at the sticky piles of fabric on the floor. At Andrew’s red mouth and tousled hair. 

“Is this a joke?” Jean asks coldly. 

“Yes,” Andrew says. “It is. I’m hilarious.”

“Are you _kidding_ ,” Jean snaps, turning on Neil. “You must be kidding.”

“Shh,” Neil hisses. He pulls Jean the rest of the way into the room and closes the door behind him, sticking his head out quickly to check for curious eyes. 

Jean’s rising temper clouds his face, pinching his features, and Neil is not at all surprised when his next words come out in French: “ _You’re sleeping with him_?”

“Uhhh,” Neil says. 

“ _Are you that stupid_?”

“Jean,” Andrew says warningly. “We’ve talked about this.”

“Right,” Jean says, switching back to English, clipping the syllables angrily. “How could I forget that everything must be the way you want it all the time.”

“Is that so?” Andrew asks. “Then I can’t imagine why you’re here.” 

“Hey, guys—” Neil starts, but neither of them seem to even register that they’re interrupting him. 

“You couldn’t stand to share his attention, could you?” He turns on Neil. “Is this what you meant when you said it _became relevant_? Did he hit on you? How long did it take him?”

“A little over a week,” Andrew answers. “Long enough to be sure you weren’t really doing anything for him.”

Neil mutters, “For fuck’s sake,” but they both ignore him. 

“You did it _for_ him, did you?” Jean snaps. “How dumb do you think I am?”

Andrew opens his mouth to answer, but Neil hastily steps between them, holding his ground when Andrew tries to muscle him back out of the way. 

“This is stupid,” Neil says, loudly enough that they both _have_ to hear him. “Whatever Andrew and I are doing doesn’t affect our thing. He doesn’t care about the—dating.”

“Of course he doesn’t care,” Jean says, glaring. “He gets to keep controlling what you do but he doesn’t have to acknowledge you in public.” 

Which is. Well. A lot. Neil falters for a moment, a little at a loss for words. Is that what’s happening? Not the controlling part—Andrew isn’t. Well, he kind of is, sometimes, in specific contexts, but only when you’ve agreed to— Not important. Neil has always figured the secrecy was Andrew’s way to protect his privacy— _their_ privacy—but he hadn’t thought Andrew might be, what? Ashamed of him?

Jean surges ahead into the silence, spitting, “What makes you any different from—”

There’s a span of seconds where Neil realizes where the sentence is going to go. Andrew gets there first and steps forward, but Neil gets it in time to block either him or Jean from getting into each other’s space.

“Stop,” Neil says coldly, suddenly furious. “Do not finish that sentence.” 

“It’s the same thing,” Jean insists. “You don’t understand why I can’t tell Riko no. Can you tell _him_ no?” 

Neil blanches. Against his back, Andrew goes rigid. 

“Yes,” Neil says. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do know,” Jean argues. “I know exactly what I’m talking about. His methods might be different, but the goal is the same.”

“You know what?” Neil snaps, his temper fraying dangerously. “You don’t get to come in here and insult me to my face. Or him. He’s not controlling and I’m not controllable—but I sure as fuck know what it looks like when someone is trying.” 

“No one knows from the inside,” Jean says. “You can’t see him—”

“Take a walk,” Neil orders. “We’re not having this conversation.”

For a moment, they’re at a stalemate—everyone silent, everyone angry. Jean breaks first, cursing viciously in French before turning on his heel and storming out, slamming the door closed behind him. 

Neil steps forward to lock it, letting his forehead fall against the wood once he’s done. He breathes once, twice, a third time, until he feels a little less like tearing through his apartment and slicing everyone to shreds.

“You don’t have to fight my battles,” Andrew says flatly.

“Yes I do,” Neil counters. “You won’t do it.”

“I fight the ones that matter. I do not give a single fuck about their opinions.”

“It does matter,” Neil says. “They treat you like shit.”

“You think I care?”

Neil turns, propping his back against the door and meeting Andrew’s eyes levelly. “I care. They don’t pay attention and they make assumptions and if I have to tell every single one of them where to shove it, I’ll do it.”

“It’s a waste of time,” Andrew says. 

“It’s my time to waste. And I’m not letting him say you’re anything like Riko.”

Andrew is quiet for a long moment. Then he shrugs. “Fine,” he says. “It’s stupid but at least it’s harmless.” 

The fading charge of energy leaves Neil exhausted in its wake, sapped by the momentum of his anger. He leans more of his weight against the door and rubs at his face again, frustrated and bristling. “Can we just—I don’t know. Fuck.”

He’s not sure if the rustle of movement is towards him or away from him, if it’s Andrew going back to the bed or coming to push Neil aside so he can leave the room. He hears the rustle and he braces for another round of arguing or for dismissal and then Andrew’s hands slide onto his sides and around to his back, wrapping Neil up in an incredibly rare hug. Relieved, Neil drapes his arms over Andrew’s shoulders and leans into it, burying his face against the stretch of shoulder he can reach. “I hate it,” he mumbles. “It’s not fair.”

“Nothing’s fair,” Andrew says against his ear. “You know that.”

“That’s not true,” Neil argues. “You are. You’re fair.” 

Andrew doesn’t have an answer for that. They stand there, quietly, sharing air. Neil is held safely between the locked door and Andrew’s chest. Fury rises and falls and crests and bottoms out. He imagines a dozen ways to ruin the moods of every single asshole that showed up tonight. He thinks about standing on his dining room table, killing the music, and spending the next two hours telling everyone _exactly_ , in minute detail, what is wrong with them. 

Eventually, lulled by the press of Andrew’s body and the even rhythm of Andrew’s breath, Neil feels like he has most of his shit back together. 

“Okay,” he says, inhaling deeply and exhaling with purpose. “I’m ready. Let’s go kill Riko.”

Andrew’s huff of laughter tickles Neil’s neck. 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

He lets the pull of Andrew’s gravity lead him back to the kitchen for drinks and then through the living room until they reach Kevin, Jean, Renee, and Jeremy, who have claimed a stretch of wall near the balcony. The press of bodies nearby makes everything a little too warm, but the open balcony door lets in a breeze that’s almost too cold. Between that and the volume level, they’ve formed a tight little huddle. 

The breeze seems to have cooled Jean’s temper, too, but he still holds Andrew’s eyes pointedly as they approach. 

“Hey, guys,” Jeremy says, grinning. “We were just reliving our glory.” 

Neil smiles at him distractedly. “We were pretty great.”

They were. But more important than that is what Kevin’s face is doing. Neil studies him carefully, looking for signs of his earlier bitterness and misery. He’s not sure if it’s truly passed or if Kevin is too tipsy to feel it anymore, but all he can see is excitement and pride in Kevin’s flushed cheeks and bright eyes. 

“We were sloppy,” Kevin protests without any real heat. “We need better teamwork.”

“You’re just saying that because you put Riko to _shame_ ,” Jeremy laughs. “I’ve never seen anyone be that pissed when their own teammate scored.”

Kevin’s smile starts stiff but quickly breaks into wickedness, lubricated by whatever is sloshing around in his cup. “I was pretty good.”

“You were on _fire_ ,” Jeremy says. “So were you, goalies.”

Andrew shrugs a shoulder, bored. Jeremy, undeterred, turns to Jean with admiring eyes. “I heard the Stingray strikers bitching about you after the game. You pretty much ruined their lives. It was great.” 

Neil lets the conversation flow over him, nodding and making agreeable noises when it seems like the right time. Usually he’d be extremely interested in this post-game recap, especially after such a decisive victory, but not even Exy can penetrate the post-orgasm, post-fight, post-near-murder-spree fatigue setting into Neil’s bones. At some point, Jean materializes at his side with a cup of something. Neil sniffs at it, smells only lemonade, and smiles gratefully at him. 

Jean wraps a fond arm around Neil’s shoulders and bends to murmur, “ _We’ll talk later_.”

Neil nods and leans, letting the heat of Jean’s body counter the effects of the chill seeping in from outside. He tries to tune back into the conversation, but all he can seem to hear are the voices of everyone surrounding them. He listens to half a conversation about how to cheat on Mr. Foster’s Biology exams, takes some unknown guy’s side in an argument with his boyfriend about whether or not it’s okay to put your feet up on other people’s furniture, and finds himself frustrated with another guy who keeps flirting with the girl who’s trying to explain anarchy to him. His attention drifts from the virtues of real housewives to outrageous gossip about Seth and Allison to some girl anxiously arguing with someone about whether or not they’re too drunk to drive. 

Because the theme of this party is “ruin Neil’s night,” apparently. He ducks out from under Jean’s arm and spins, tracking the voices to the argument happening too close to the front door for his liking. The guy, Neil sees, is bulky and annoyed, red in the face and looming too close to his girlfriend so that he can hiss at her. Neil winds his way over, doing his best to look purposeless. He aims himself at the guy and bumps into him hard, spilling the lemonade over the guy’s shoes and carefully slipping the fingers of his other hand into the guy’s pocket to pluck out his keys.

“Whoops,” Neil says, his eyes trained on the wet floor. 

“Fuck you,” the guy snaps. “That’s it. We’re leaving.”

“Sorry,” Neil says, shrugging. He hands the anxious girlfriend his empty cup and moves back through the crowd until he reaches Andrew’s side. 

Andrew raises an eyebrow and Neil shrugs again, tossing the keys so Andrew can snatch them out of the air. “Can you put these somewhere? He was going to drive drunk.”

They both look at the pile of keys in Andrew’s hand. Eventually, Andrew shrugs, turns, and throws them through the open balcony door and over the railing, where they drop gracelessly out of sight. 

“Andrew,” Renee protests lightly. “We have to go find those.”

Andrew makes an extremely skeptical face at her.

“At least come hold the flashlight,” Renee says. “We can give them back to him at school on Monday.”

“Are you supposed to be my conscience?” Andrew asks. “You’re not very convincing.” 

“You’re going to come anyway,” she says sunnily. “Because I’m asking you nicely.”

Neil knows she has him. He hides his smile behind his cup.

Andrew holds out another second, looking like he’s waffling, but then he sighs and down his drink in one gulp, gesturing with the empty cup for her to precede him. They’ve only been gone a few seconds before a loud, “Where the _fuck_ are my keys?” rings out over the crowd. 

With Andrew gone, Jean steps even closer and tentatively wraps Neil in a hug. “ _I’m sorry_ ,” he whispers. “ _I’m just worried._ ”

“You don’t have to be,” Neil says. “There’s nothing to be worried about.”

Jean frowns, like he’s going to argue, but he seems to think better of it. Instead, he rests his cheek on the top of Neil’s head and turns his attention back to the conversation. 

It’s nice. It’s always nice. But it’s weird to be touching someone else this soon after trying so hard to become a part of Andrew’s space. 

It’s nice, but he wants everyone to leave. Including Jean. 

It’s nice, but he wants to close the balcony door, pile on the blankets, and watch something weird or stupid with Andrew. 

You can’t always have what you want, Neil reminds himself. Anyway, it’s got to be almost over. There were four digits on the cable modem last time he looked, and he’s pretty sure the first two were both ones. What’s a reasonable time to shut down a party? Neil has no idea. He should ask.

“Hey, Jean—” he starts, but is cut off by a loud crashing noise. Instinct has him tearing himself away from Jean and readying himself to run.

Then he hears Katelyn’s high, nervous voice saying, “Come on, guys.” 

Another loud crash and Neil does start moving—except that the way his life works now means that he moves towards the disturbance instead of away from it. 

The crowd of people seems more densely formed, packed into a large ring. When Neil pushes through the bodies he finds Aaron squared up against some pretentious-looking guy with bright ginger hair that is objectively way more obnoxious than Neil’s. It takes a second, but Neil thinks he recognizes him—maybe as one of Katelyn’s Model UN friends. 

One of Neil’s bar stools is on its side on the floor, the source of the noise. Aaron and the guy are facing off, too close, exchanging vicious shoves. Neil takes a moment to thank whatever higher power may exist that Andrew isn’t here to see this and step in, and then he...steps in. The guy shoves at Aaron again, drawing himself up to loom as much as possible. He snarls, “She’s not even your girl.”

Aaron’s face is too mobile in its fury. Neil can see the hit land. Katelyn is, of course, Aaron’s girl in almost every sense—it’s just that he has a deal with Andrew, so they all pretend it’s not official. He watches Aaron set his jaw, trying to rein in the emotion on his face; he sees the ground Aaron gains fall away immediately as the guy says, “We all know you’re too busy being butt buddies with your psycho brother.”

Neil takes the last couple of steps and kicks the guy sharply in the back of his knee. The lanky body goes down hard, flailing for a hand-hold; he almost gets his fist in Aaron’s sweater, but Aaron steps back at the last moment and the guy, coming up empty, hits the ground with barely any protection from his arms. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” the guy whines. He rolls onto his side and pulls his knee to his chest. 

“Get up,” Neil says flatly. 

“I _can’t_. You broke my _knee_.”

“Could have,” Neil says. “Didn’t. Get up.”

When he doesn’t, Neil leans down and wraps his hand up in the guy’s idiotic sport coat. He uses the grip to start walking towards the door, dragging the guy a foot or so before he hears, “Okay, _okay_ , fucking _hell_. What is wrong with you people?”

“Right now, it’s you,” Neil says. He drops the guy’s mangled coat and frowns down at him. “Can you fuck off yourself or do you need more help?”

Grumbling, the guy picks himself up and hobbles off, favoring his knee more than Neil thinks is strictly necessary. His friends follow, awkwardly, shuffling sideways past Neil like he’s going to lash out. They turn even more sideways when they meet Andrew and Renee coming back in the door, making themselves as small and unobtrusive as possible.

“You’re such an asshole,” Aaron huffs. Neil had mostly forgotten about him, but he turns now, finding Aaron flushed and angry. 

“Excuse me?” Neil says.

“I was handling that.”

Andrew steps up, looking curiously between them. “Handling what?”

“Some Model UN asshole—” Aaron starts, glaring hard at Neil.

“Bolivia,” Katelyn offers.

“Some Model Bolivia asshole was trying to start shit.”

“About what?” Andrew asks mildly. 

“About—” Aaron starts. He seems to realize he has no good answer immediately, though, and his mouth snaps shut. Katelyn is the answer. It was about Katelyn. Aaron can’t admit that without admitting he has reason to defend his claim on her. 

“He was being homophobic,” Aaron mutters. His cheeks are burning.

“Heaven forbid,” Andrew says, his tone still as smooth and bland as vanilla. 

Neil plasters a brittle smile on his face and tells Aaron, “Sorry for interfering. I’ll leave you to _handle_ this.”

He turns his back on the killing look he knows Aaron is giving him and makes his way to his bedroom, where he flops face-down on his bed and pokes one-handed at his phone until it starts ringing.

“Neil?” Nicky says, tinny through the speakers. “Are you okay?”

“I need a favor,” Neil says. 

“You've got it. Is everything okay?”

“No,” Neil says. “It sucks. There are so many people here.”

“At….the party?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s a bad thing?”

“If it doesn’t end I am going to fake my own death and move out of the country. Again.”

“Okay,” Nicky laughs. “I’m on my way. Don’t fake die yet.”

Neil rolls onto his back and stares at the specks of dust or dead bugs shadowing the milky white glass of his ceiling light. The sheets are cool, but still smell of sex and Andrew. He lets his eyes fall closed and imagines a world in which they’d kept the door locked, didn’t let anyone else in, and spent the rest of the night seeing how long Andrew could tolerate Neil staring at him. It’s usually not very long, but Neil isn’t easily discouraged.

He lies there until a loud burst of laughter drifts through his bedroom door and then he reminds himself that he is a survivor and that he is very tough and that he has lived through much worse than this party. Well. Worse than this party. He’s been riding adrenaline spikes all night, between the game and the fights and the sex. It’s like throwing your body at the same roller coaster over and over again until you can’t even make it to the front of the line anymore without falling and the attendants won’t let you on. 

The vibe of the party is at least better when he emerges back into the living room. The clusters are still close, but everyone seems more relaxed. More conversations, less posturing. Neil leans against the wall just inside the mouth of the hallway and watches the eddies and flows of people rotating through the space, circling tight clusters, moving in easy, soft curves. It could be meditative, if it wasn’t so loud. And crowded. 

It could be meditative if it wasn’t happening in his apartment.

He spots Andrew across the room, but he’s too afraid of losing this fragile calm to subject himself to more than the light bumps he’s getting as people trickle through the hallway. Jean, too, catches his eye; Neil shakes his head at Jean’s questioning look and turns his attention back to the front door. Jeremy is with him. He can keep Jean and Andrew apart even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. 

Finally, _finally_ , the front door flies open and rebounds off the wall. Neil can’t quite see the entry, but he hears Nicky’s loud, exaggeratedly deep, “Listen up, punks!” as clear as a bell. 

The room hushes fast at the presence of an actual adult—the tides of movement freeze, feet stop their shuffling, and every head turns towards the door. Someone turns off the speaker.

“Is there alcohol at this party?” Nicky booms. The sea of kids parts before him, wide-eyed, as he moves through the room. He reaches out and snatches a cup from some girl’s hand, sniffing it suspiciously. 

An uncomfortable shifting takes over the room as Nicky sniffs more cups on his way to the living room, where he climbs up onto the ottoman and points sternly at the group. “Alright,” he says. “Party over. Form a single-file line so I can start calling your parents.”

It’s like he’s poured coffee onto an anthill. Everyone scatters, rapidly grabbing shoes and purses and jackets and friends and streaming out through the front door with a speed and coordination school fire drills can only aspire to.

“You,” Nicky says, singling out a blue-haired boy who’s trying to scurry past with his boots clutched to his chest. “I know your father. Come here.”

The boy is gone so quickly he seems to evaporate. 

Within minutes, Neil’s apartment is empty other than the handful of people Neil actually wanted here tonight; they collectively watch Nicky with tipsy bemusement. 

Nicky turns in a circle until he spots Kevin. He points again, his somber facade breaking into an easy smile. “I definitely know _your_ father.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew cooks. Neil little-spoons. Kevin laments his many hardships.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's pretend we didn't skip last week.
> 
> Unbeta'd though I did read it several times, so hopefully I caught most of the problems. 
> 
> Time to get soft and chill.

_  
“Hello?”_

_“Oh my god, you have to get here right now.”_

_“Where? The party?”_

_“_ Yes _. They’re letting everybody in.”_

_“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Sneak me in if you have to.”_

___

_**@thegirlwiththeplan**  
big shoutout to Neil Josten @its2020getatwitter for giving me a pep talk in the bathroom and telling me to go get the girl. I went and got her!_

___

_“I heard someone called the cops to break it up.”_

_“No way. My friend was there and she said someone’s dad showed up and started calling parents.”_

_“I heard someone called the cops because there was a big fight.”_

_“Yeah! Neil and one of the Minyard twins got into it.”_

_“Over_ what _? And which one?”_

_“Over a girl, I guess?”_

_“That doesn’t tell me which twin it was.”_

_“The one that’s...into girls?”_

_“Does that mean one of them_ isn’t _into girls?”_

_“Sorry. I’m trying to imagine Andrew Minyard with a girlfriend—”_

_“Or a boyfriend.”_

_“—or a boyfriend. It’s not working.”_

___

_**@grimkeanonymoussnaps**  
Special thanks to Neil Josten for throwing a party and to Riko Moriyama for having the loosest of lips._

 _ **anonymous** :  
Riko Moriyama told my friend that there is _so _much drama on the exy team. He said Matt Boyd is on like all the drugs. I don’t know if he meant steroids or like heroin though._

_**anonymous** :  
I overheard Riko Moriyama telling some girl that Kevin and Neil are constantly fighting because Neil is getting better than Kevin and he’s like crazy about being the best_

_**anonymous** :  
I was near Riko when Neil and Andrew disappeared at the party and he said Andrew is insanely jealous of Jean. Or maybe it was the other way. Idr I was real drunk._

_**anonymous** :  
I for sure saw Neil Josten go into his bedroom with at least three different guys_

_**anonymous** :  
Allison and Renee were cuddling. Gordon looked pissed._

___

_**@velveetavixen**  
best party ever at neil josten’s house. there was a huge bowl of free condoms, i saw like four couples get into arguments, andrew minyard threatened a guy with a big fucking knife, someone had a threesome in one of the bedrooms, allison reynolds danced topless on the table, neil josten got into a fist fight, someone got a blowjob on the balcony, and literally everyone was on ecstasy. _

_**yourmomsays** :  
nice try bro. I was there the whole time and only like half of those things happened._

___

Nicky decrees that everybody has to help clean up before they’re allowed to leave. He offers—almost insists—on taking Neil home with him, but Neil manages to decline without too much fuss.

It gets a little bit bumpy when Andrew says he’s staying. 

Aaron’s eyes narrow into slits. Dan and Allison exchange some look Neil can’t quite translate. Jeremy’s eyebrows just about hit his hairline before he can wrangle them back into control. 

Kevin says, “Me too.”

This is, of course, because Kevin is really very drunk and would prefer his father not see him in this state. 

Jean, his expression remote and chilly, starts to open his mouth. Neil assumes he’s going to announce his intentions to stay and ‘help,” and interrupts quickly. “Jean needs a ride,” he says. “If you don’t mind, Nicky.”

“Of course,” Nicky says. “I will take charge of all of these ducklings.” 

Jean shoots Neil an unimpressed look, which Neil completely ignores in favor of hugging him goodbye. He wraps his arms tight around Jean’s ribs, trying to thank him for his misplaced concern, even if he isn’t really apologizing for the sort-of-fight earlier.

“Call me tomorrow,” he says, as close to Jean’s ear as he can get. “We can talk.”

Jean squeezes him quickly and then lets go, his arms dropping slowly. He allows himself to be herded to the door with the rest of them, though he does shoot a suspicious glance back over his shoulder at Andrew. Neil leaves the rest of the designated driver shuffle to Nicky and closes the door behind Jean, the straggler. He locks the deadbolt, engages the security chain, and thinks seriously about dragging a piece of furniture over to block the door. 

When he turns around, he finds Kevin sprawled on the couch and Andrew leaning against the breakfast bar, watching him with one eyebrow slightly lifted. 

“They could come back. Or more people could show up,” Neil says defensively. 

“And we can just not open the door,” Andrew says. “They don’t have keys.”

“Did you find that guy’s?”

Andrew shrugs, then nods towards Kevin. “What do you want to do with him?”

Kevin’s eyes blink open. “Me?”

“You,” Andrew agrees. “We could put him in the bathtub.”

“I won’t fit,” Kevin protests. He lifts one leg into the air and gestures at it dramatically. “I am very tall.”

He is, actually. Probably even too tall to fit comfortably on the couch. 

There are two beds: his and Andrew’s, in the guest room. He can’t imagine that Andrew wants to share a mattress with either of them that long, which leaves Neil’s. He could give it to Kevin and take the couch himself, but then he’d have to sleep on the couch. That’s not happening, especially not after the day he’s had.

“He can crash with me,” Neil says. “But maybe we should feed him first.”

Andrew’s eyes flick towards the TV and then back. “We’re only a couple of minutes before midnight. Is that enough time?”

“M’not a _gremlin_ ,” Kevin says indignantly. 

Andrew hums. “Debatable.”

“I want buttered noodles,” Kevin says. 

Neil turns with him to look expectantly at Andrew, who says, “No.”

“Andreeeeew,” Kevin whines. “Noodles.”

“Noodles,” Neil repeats. 

There’s a long, weird moment where they wait each other out. Kevin batting his eyelashes furiously, Neil schooling his face into a hopeful expression, and Andrew, immobile, staring impassively at them both. Kevin is starting to look a little seasick by the time Andrew breaks, his equilibrium fucked by the rapid flutter of his lashes and, Neil assumes, the large quantity of alcohol in his system. 

“Fine,” Andrew says. “But I’ll deny it all the way to the grave.” 

Kevin’s upflung victory arms turn into grabby hands when Neil moves back into the living room. Neil detours that way and tries to sit at the other end of the couch, but Kevin hooks a finger through Neil’s belt loop and drags him down so close that Neil has to slide off Kevin’s lap to claim his own stretch of the cushion. 

“I’m sorry about earlier,” Kevin says, with deep, drunken earnestness. “You guys are my best friends.”

“Oh,” Neil says, surprised. Friends in general are new to him. This best friend thing is so out of his realm of experience, he doesn’t know how to process it. And then, of course, a boyfriend. And whatever he and Andrew are. “I mean. Yeah. That’s okay.”

From the kitchen, Andrew calls, “You’re spooking him, Day. Dial it back.”

“He’s yours, too,” Kevin shouts back. A little too loudly. It rings in Neil’s ears. He turns to Neil and stage-whispers, “He’s just too emotionally constipated to admit it.”

Is that what Neil is? Andrew’s ‘best friend’? It doesn’t seem quite right—doesn’t exactly line up with the way Andrew was kissing him earlier. Are the three of them all in this same category? Andrew isn’t—or _is_ he doing the sex things with Kevin? Neil doesn’t think so, but, then again, how would he ever know? No one knows they’re doing things, either, other than Jean, and he just stumbled across it. How has Neil missed this entire dimension to his relationships with these people? How—

“Look at this,” Kevin calls indignantly. “Does he even know you like him?”

Suddenly horrified, Neil jerks his attention towards the kitchen, where all that’s visible of Andrew is a mop of blond hair and the span of his back. Neil tries to hone in on anything other than the set of Andrew’s shoulders and winds up focusing so hard on the noise of the water boiling that it floods his ears as loudly as Niagara Falls. He has never before realized how much he does _not_ want to hear Andrew bluntly assess how or how much or whether or not he gives a shit about Neil. 

“Hey,” Neil starts, but he’s interrupted by Andrew turning and waving the slotted spoon at him quellingly. 

“Neil and I are on the same page,” Andrew says. “We have a gentleman’s agreement.” 

Do they? What the fuck does that even mean?

“What the fuck does that even mean?” Kevin asks. 

“It means that when one of us comes to kill the other, we’ll do it face-to-face.”

“That’s so weird,” Kevin says. “You guys are so weird.” 

Neil remembers Jean saying _he doesn’t have to acknowledge you in public_ and feels something stir uncomfortably inside his chest. But that doesn’t really click either. There must be a middle ground. He just doesn’t know the word for it.

He’s so busy chasing that thought through his mind that he doesn’t register Andrew calling his name, but he jerks back to attention when fingers start snapping. He looks up to find that Andrew has stepped out from behind the kitchen bar and far enough into the living room to lean against the back of the uncomfortable armchair that usually ends up collecting hoodies and socks. Andrew points his spoon at Neil and says, sternly, “Stop thinking.”

Neil frowns.

“Stick to things you’re good at,” Andrew says. 

“Like Exy?” Kevin asks. “And pick-pocketing, apparently.”

“That wasn’t anything,” Neil says, immeasurably relieved by the subject change. “That guy was drunk. I could have taken his keys with a wrecking ball and he wouldn’t have noticed.”

“And you kicked that other guy’s—” 

Neil covers Kevin’s mouth with his hand. “Don’t you have to call your dad?”

“Mmrhpfh.” 

Cautiously, Neil pulls his hand away. He keeps it at the ready in case Kevin takes this conversation to more undesirable places. Neil can’t tiptoe down another dark path tonight.

“Nope,” Kevin says. “He told me to definitely not drink. And that if I drank, to sleep over. Ergo, I am sleeping over.”

“Kevin,” Andrew calls. “Text your fucking father.”

By the time Kevin has put together a coherent, correctly spelled text to Wymack, Andrew has the bowls of pasta, butter, and parmesan cheese ready. He hands them off, careless of the heat of the bowls. Kevin almost drops his as he tries to juggle it onto a pillow and into his lap. Andrew just sits on the ottoman facing them, his legs crossed beneath him, and watches with a sort of bland judgment as Kevin starts shoveling the food into his mouth, slurping noodles between pursed lips when the whole bite doesn’t quite make it off the fork. 

Neil takes a couple of minutes after they eat to shove the dishes into the dishwasher and then they herd an increasingly sleepy Kevin to the bedroom. Mostly, Andrew follows on Kevin’s heels, poking him between the shoulder blades any time he tries to turn around or gets distracted. Once they’re there, though, Kevin’s single-mindedness takes over; he peels off his shirt, shoves his jeans down, and flops into bed in mismatched black socks and underwear. He mumbles something that sounds like “Thanks, guys” into the pillow and then promptly passes out. There’s a lot more of him this way, crammed into Neil’s usually very spacious bed, his limbs thrown carelessly around. Neil’s going to have to move at least one of those limbs if he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight.

“You didn’t put him in the guest room,” Andrew observes. 

“I didn’t think you’d want to share,” Neil says, surprised. 

He waits, deliberately still, while Andrew’s eyes evaluate him. It’s abruptly so quiet—no voices, no music, not even the boiling water. Just Neil’s feet sinking into his carpet and Andrew, close but not close enough. He finds himself swaying forward and catches the movement, forcing himself to lean back onto his heels instead. There’s this weird feeling of being exposed, of being helpless to stop Andrew from seeing into every nook and cranny of Neil’s mind and come away knowing way more than Neil does. 

After a long moment, Andrew steps forward. He wraps a hand in Neil’s shirt and pulls him closer, meeting him in the middle with a surprisingly gentle kiss. The softness of Andrew’s lips is a stark contrast to the hard press of his knuckles against Neil’s chest. He’s gone before Neil can get hands on him; he steps back, grabs the hamper full of his stuff, and disappears down the hall. 

Neil is way too tired to try to translate that into something that answers even one of the questions surging in his head. He really needs to sleep. The bedroom door is open, but it’s safe with just the three of them, and anyway, Kevin might need to get up and puke. Neil would prefer that happen in the bathroom. He moves quietly towards the bed, careful not to break the delicate hush of the apartment. The discordance of the party still echoes in his ears and he feels, irrationally, like a wrong step will bring it all flooding back again.

On the bed, Kevin’s even more of a starfish than he was last time Neil looked. His right arm and leg are thrown straight out across the mattress, his face pressed into the gap between the pillows. Well. Neil has slept in worse places. He starts making space for himself, shoving at Kevin’s limbs until he can crawl in next to him.

___

Neil wakes up sweating, despite the chill in the air. The source of the heat quickly reveals itself: Kevin, full on big-spooning with what feels like his face smashed against the back of Neil’s neck. The tips of Neil’s toes are cold where they peek out beneath the blanket, because of how he’s somehow been driven to the very edge of the mattress. There has to be an acre of empty mattress to the other side of Kevin, but he’s plastered so tightly against Neil that he must be dreaming of them trying to share a single sleeping bag.

Neil tries to slide out, but Kevin’s arm tightens, pulling him back a few inches. Neil pokes at the arm. No response. He tries saying “Kevin” and then, again, louder, but all he gets is a grumpy noise. The next attempt—lifting Kevin’s arm out of the way and then climbing out—is successful, despite Kevin’s disgruntled snore and the heavy flopping of his arm back onto the bed. 

Of course, once he’s out from under the covers (and Kevin), he’s fucking freezing. The first pair of sweatpants he grabs is black and thick and cheap. The Walmart special—his favorite. He’s still wearing Andrew’s Joy Division shirt, which he’s not ready to take off yet for reasons that will remain misty and vague if Neil just doesn’t think about them, but he does zip a hoodie on over it and pulls a second pair of socks onto his feet. 

The bathroom is even colder, the tiles and counter retaining the chill from the evening’s dropping temperatures. Shuffling back down the hallway at least brings a little warmth to his feet, enough that he can valiantly journey to the thermostat to turn it up by at least 25 degrees. 

He’s surprised to find Andrew already in the living room, eying the throw pillows with a critical gaze.

“One’s missing,” Andrew says. “Someone stole a pillow.” 

Neil says, “They can keep it as long as they never, ever come back here.”

Andrew makes a vaguely amused noise and then, belatedly, turns his full attention to Neil. “Sleep well?”

“I guess,” Neil says. “Kevin is an octopus.” 

He sends a look towards the thermostat. It’s set higher than he remembers it; Andrew must have turned it on. Now it’s just a waiting game for the temperature to raise. He shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets and leans against the dining table, which has somehow magically been cleaned of the spilled beer and other drinks that were crusting over when Neil went to bed last night.

“How long have you been up?” Neil asks. “Did you get cold?”

“Couldn’t turn my brain off,” Andrew says. He gives one of the pillows a last look and then crosses to the dining room. Neil watches Andrew’s socked feet approach, the black sinking into the beige carpet. They get closer and closer until Neil has to look straight down to see one of them nudge between his own feet. 

When he looks up, Andrew is close. Eyelash-counting close. Breath-sharing close. 

“I should have taken you to bed with me,” Andrew says quietly. He traces the zipper of Neil’s hoodie with one finger, dragging the tip of his nail slowly over each ridge of metal. “I thought about it all night.” 

The libido Neil never really knew he had sparks in interest. He’s been astonished to discover that this is all it takes—Andrew’s voice and the lightest touch of his finger. Its slow journey down the zipper is riveting. Neil watches it until Andrew runs out of metal. When he looks up, Andrew is even closer. A breath away. 

Neil says, “Yes.” 

He doesn’t quite pry his hands out of his pockets before Andrew’s are on him, sliding under Neil’s shirt and splaying over bare skin. Neil can feel the deferred desire in them, in the reflexive press of Andrew’s fingers against his skin, in the purposeful slide of them up and down Neil’s back. 

Neil meets Andrew’s mouth clumsily, torn between kissing him and unzipping his hoodie so that the fabric won’t bunch around Andrew’s wrists. He gets it undone and buries his hands in Andrew’s hair, matching him in the intensity of wanting, and then Andrew’s hands slide down. Neil feels the press of fingers into his skin and it’s all the warning he gets before Andrew hefts him up and onto the table and all of the breath rushes out of Neil’s lungs. 

The orange juice taste of Andrew’s mouth clashes horribly with Neil’s toothpaste and he’s chilled where his shirt and hoodie have been raked up and he’s relying heavily on Andrew’s grip to stop him from toppling off the table and taking them both to the floor. He never wants it to stop.

In Neil’s experience, the spectrum of touch had torture on one end and not-torture on the other. He hadn’t really known that not-torture had a whole sub-spectrum of its own. The nuance of it amazes him—there’s Andrew’s hands sliding under his clothes and then there’s the easy way Jean keeps Neil tucked against his side; there’s the demanding heat of Andrew’s mouth and then there’s Jean’s long fingers lacing with Neil’s. This new spectrum covers the ground between ‘warm’ and ‘on fire’. Andrew always seems to have a pocket full of matchsticks. 

But then Andrew is suddenly gone. The heat of his hands disappears, the demanding press of his mouth follows, and Andrew withdraws so quickly that Neil’s hands are left hovering in the air for a long moment. He watches, disoriented, as Andrew steps quickly to the Keurig Neil has used maybe twice since he moved here. 

“Coffee?” Andrew asks, sounding bored. “Or hot chocolate. I’m not making your disgusting tea.”

“Um,” Neil says. He drops his hands awkwardly to his thighs and blinks. His mind races through the possibilities of what he could have done wrong, but before he can land on anything, he hears it: the bathroom door swinging open. Kevin. Secrecy. “Hot chocolate. I guess.”

Kevin shuffles into the living room wrapped in Neil’s comforter, his sullen face peeking out from the blooming tulip shape of the blanket curled around his head. Neil tears his eyes away from watching Andrew watch the coffee machine and tries to focus on Kevin’s obvious misery.

“It’s not even 10,” Neil says. “What are you doing up?”

“You left,” Kevin complains. “It was very disruptive.”

“Sorry,” Neil says drily. “I should have been more considerate.”

Kevin nods vaguely in Neil’s direction, but his attention has already been captured by Andrew’s post in the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asks hopefully, apparently having either forgotten his successful wheedling of food out of Andrew the night before _or_ entirely miscalculating the lengthy waiting period he’ll probably have to endure before Andrew agrees to make him anything again.

“Make your own,” Andrew says. “I’m not your barista.”

“You’re the worst,” Kevin huffs.

“I thought he was your best friend,” Neil says.

“Yeah, well. I have terrible judgment.”

Andrew’s apathetic “Ding ding ding,” makes Neil laugh so hard he chokes on it and struggles to get his breath back under the hilarious and equally disappointed faces Andrew and Kevin are making at him.

The mint and orange are still mingling under his tongue, but the air has warmed up and the heat of Andrew’s hands against his skin is dissipating. The flame they’d been building dwindles until the ache of wanting releases its hold on Neil’s body. 

Despite his refusal, Andrew makes Kevin’s coffee—he shoves it and a bowl of the healthiest granola-type cereal in the house towards Kevin and plops down with his own colorful mosaic of sugary loops that leech their pastels into the milk. For Neil, he’s made toast, smearing it with Nutella and carefully arranging it in front of Neil at the table. Neil ducks his head to hide what he knows has to be a fond (adoring) smile before Andrew can see it and punish him for it. 

“I don’t remember much of last night,” Kevin admits around a mouthful of cereal. “Did I do anything stupid?”

In unison, Andrew and Neil say, “Yes.”

Kevin scowls and scoops up another spoonful. “How bad was it?”

“You invited yourself to Riko’s,” Andrew says mildly. “Along with Neil.”

“Wait, what?” Neil asks. 

“You were off playing footsie with your boyfriend,” Andrew says. “Kevin marched up to Riko and announced that you two would be there bright and early next Saturday morning.” 

Kevin winces. 

“But you said...” Neil frowns. “Kevin, I told you last night. He’s nothing. You have nothing to prove.” 

“Don’t be stupid,” Kevin scoffs, shooting Neil a dark look. “Of course I do.”

“You don’t—” Neil starts, but Andrew interrupts him so smoothly it’s as though he wasn’t talking in the first place.

Andrew says, “I’ll keep him in line.”

“You’re coming?” Neil asks.

The look Andrew sends him matches the last one Kevin had aimed his direction. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

Neil drops his piece of toast on the table and leans back in his chair, blinking his way through the flash mob of possibilities in his head. “Man,” he says after a minute. “He’s not going to have a good time.”

That puts a smile on Kevin’s face, however strained.

They migrate to the living room after breakfast. It’s warmer now, enough that Neil doesn’t feel the need to curl in on himself to conserve body heat, but Kevin keeps the puffy comforter wrapped around himself anyway. He tries to flop onto the couch, but Andrew makes the kind of noise you make at a toddler about to misbehave and points sternly at the recliner until Kevin shuffles towards it and collapses, scrambling a little to situate himself while it rocks. All that’s visible of him is his face—messy hair, sharp, blood-shot green eyes, the jut of his chin—above the profusion of puffy blanket. 

Neil obediently flops into his corner of the couch, his back to the arm, the way they sit when one or both of them don’t really want to be touched. He misses the pillow that has disappeared. It used to fit just so against his lower back. Even though it was some kind of wild floral that Allison had insisted upon, it was a good pillow. 

It’s the things like that which baffle him. Whose life is he living, because it certainly isn’t his. 

Andrew grabs the remote the way he usually does and flops, too, at his end of the sofa, pausing to shake out a blanket partially over their not-quite-touching legs before turning his attention to the remote. It’s Andrew’s version of a polite request; Neil takes over, smoothing out the bunches of fabric and tucking it where the warmth escapes. 

The TV flips from the Cartoon Network to Netflix to Hulu to the Food Network while Andrew looks for the exact right thing to watch. He seems so absorbed in it that Neil is almost startled into motion when he feels Andrew’s foot slide up the inside of his leg and prop itself on his thigh. Neil looks at the shape of it under the blanket, not quite sure what to do. He looks up at Andrew when the foot jiggles pointedly. Andrew looks from it to Neil and then back again. Neil knows he’s supposed to do _something_ , but he’s not completely sure what that something is. The foot is a metaphor for all the things he can’t quite grasp lately.

Carefully, he slips a hand under the blanket.

Carefully, he runs his fingertips over the curve of Andrew’s arch. 

When Andrew jiggles his foot again, Neil takes a risk and slides his hand slowly up and under Andrew’s pajama pants. He circles Andrew’s ankle with his fingers gently, barely brushing the skin, the breath in his lungs suspended as though exhaling would disturb the air enough that Andrew might revoke this precarious trust. When he doesn’t—when Andrew just settles more into his corner, letting the weight of his leg rest against Neil’s and wiggling his toes encouragingly—Neil relaxes enough to rub circles over and around the jutting bones of Andrew’s ankle. 

Kevin is asleep before they get through even half an episode of _BoJack Horseman_. Neil pays less attention to the cartoon than he does to the way Andrew’s languid blinking matches the tempo of Neil’s stroking fingers. Only Andrew seems to even notice that it's on.

Neil will never really be sure which one of them falls asleep first.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean tells a story. Neil makes coffee. Riko misses the point.

Neil doesn’t find a chance to talk to Jean that weekend. He doesn’t exactly go looking for one, but in his defense….well, he has none. He just didn’t want to spoil his Saturday with Kevin and Andrew or his Sunday mostly alone with a heavy-handed conversation in which Jean recasts Neil as himself and Andrew as Riko. He knows they’ll have to go another round sooner than later, but he’s not looking forward to what he’ll do if someone tries to convince him he’s hopelessly naïve twice within forty-eight hours. 

It takes sixty-four. 

It’s just about long enough, so he stops halfway to practice and waits when he hears Jean calling his name, just a little bit choppily, like he’s jogging. 

“Mon lapin,” Jean says when he catches up, gesturing elegantly towards a lesser-used hallway that branches off the main. “Can we talk?” 

Neil keeps them moving until they reach the light-soaked end of the hallway with nothing but a maintenance closet door anywhere near them. The scene contained within the aluminum frames of the windows is sunny and carefree—dozens of students with scarves and stupid beanies. A longing to be out there ignoring all of those happy people bubbles through him, but he can’t dodge this conversation forever. 

“There’s really nothing to worry about,” Neil says, turning to Jean. “I promise it’s—” 

“I spoke to Andrew,” Jean interrupts. “I asked him about you.” 

“Oh,” Neil says. His surprise rocks him back onto his heels a bit. He’s not sure he wants to know what Andrew said—but he really wants to know what Andrew said. Maybe Jean got answers that Neil simply doesn’t have, or even really know how to ask for. From the look of Jean’s face, though, Neil’s probably not going to like them. 

“I offered to end our arrangement,” Jean says, formal in a way that feels more like pity to Neil than it does like awkwardness or offense. Neil stiffens commensurately. 

“Oh,” he says again, blankly. 

Jean starts to talk, stops, frowns, looks back down the hallway, and then uses his hands on Neil’s arms to shuffle them a little closer to the window. 

Bad sign. 

“He said it doesn’t matter,” Jean says. “He said that he doesn’t care what you do or who you do it with.” 

Neil stares at him, all the rioting implications of that blending into static in his head. Does he believe Jean? Jean doesn’t have a reason to lie. Second-hand Andrew is notoriously unreliable, though. Words are often the least of the ways Andrew communicates. 

“I asked him why he was acting so jealous if he isn’t, and he said...well, he said I’m a pathetic coward and that his disdain for me has nothing to do with you and everything to do with my not being able to stand up to Riko.” 

None of this is a surprise, really. It’s the same thing Andrew’s already told Neil a half dozen times. It just sounds a lot different coming from Jean. Something in his stomach twists uncomfortably. 

“He’s using you,” Jean says gently. “I know you care about him. _He_ knows you care about him. He’s manipulating you to get what he wants.” 

“Which is what?” Neil asks, feeling oddly stricken and angry about it, his temper pulled dangerously thin and fraying. “What is it you think he wants?” 

Jean looks awkwardly towards his feet, then back down the hallway, then at his feet again. Finally, he squares his shoulders and meets Neil’s eyes again. “Sex.” 

“We’re not having sex,” Neil says flatly. “Not….sex sex.” 

“Control, then.” 

“No one controls me. A lot of people have tried and failed.” 

Jean’s answering sigh is exasperated. “Neil, he told me very frankly that he does not care about you.” 

“Did he?” Neil asks doubtfully. He may not know why they’re doing what they’re doing, he may not know what it is, or what Andrew really wants, or what the kissing and touching actually means, but he _does_ know how intensely Andrew cares. About him. About Aaron, and Kevin, and Nicky, and Renee. About all kinds of things no one ever notices. “He said he doesn’t care about me?” 

“Well.” Jean frowns. “Those weren’t his exact words, but it came across—” 

“Or did he tell you he doesn’t care if we keep doing _this_ , you and me, because he thinks it’s stupid?” 

“I—” Jean huffs and rakes a frustrated hand through his hair. “Fuck, Neil. Will you ever stop defending him?” 

“Probably not.” 

“You think you’re above it. Above being manipulated. It makes you vulnerable.” 

“I think I’ve been through the pro leagues,” Neil shoots back. “I think I know what it looks like when someone is honest. I think none of you see anything more than you want to see.” 

Jean frowns, his eyebrows drawing so close his brow forms deep furrows. He ticks his points off on his fingers. “He has keys to your apartment. He drives your car. He comes over uninvited when you’re not home. He decides where you sit and when you leave. He wants to fuck you and keep you a secret. You don’t seem to give a shit how many of the shots he calls. I know you think you get something out of this, but I have yet to see what it is. I just see him getting his way. He could have a boot on your face and you’d find a way to excuse it.” 

Neil swears quietly to himself in German and closes his eyes, taking a moment so he doesn’t say something wildly regrettable. He doesn’t know why this is twisting him up so much. Jean is concerned. He isn’t criticizing Neil, so why does Neil feel so defensive? Jean isn’t really even attacking Andrew. Jean just doesn’t understand Andrew. He doesn’t understand Neil. He doesn’t understand Andrew’s protective instincts. He’s worried. He’s kind and soft. 

Andrew and Neil are not soft. Jean is silk and they are sandpaper. 

“Look,” he says calmly. “Thank you for trying to look out for me. I appreciate it. But Andrew and I are more alike than we are different. He and I aren’t dating. We’re...friends. And I already know he doesn’t care about what you and I are doing.” 

“What would he care about?” Jean asks. “What if we were hooking up. Would he care about that?” 

Neil has no idea if Andrew would care about that. 

“But we’re not,” he says pointedly. “He knew that before anything happened.” 

Jean holds his hands up in surrender, his palms loosely cupped towards Neil, placating. “I’m not going to bring it up again. I wanted to hear Andrew speak for himself and I didn’t like what I heard, but it’s your decision to make. We can stop doing this whenever you want. I just thought you needed to know that the guy you keep defending says that whatever you’re doing together is nothing. It’s meaningless. You deserve better than meaningless. Everyone does.” 

Those do sound like words Andrew would use. They’re not necessarily words Neil would expect Andrew to use about _him_ , but they’re definitely prominent in the Andrew-to-English dictionary. What does nothing even mean in this context? What does meaningless mean to Andrew? Insignificant, Neil thinks. Inconsequential. But it doesn’t feel like that for Neil. The clutch of Andrew’s hands on him and the combative heat of his mouth always feel pretty fucking significant. 

It’s not like Neil didn’t already know this, right? Andrew had told him that first time: “there is no us.” It’s just. How can there not be an ‘us’ when Neil is so electrified by Andrew’s touch? Why would Andrew reach for him so often if he was indifferent? 

“Why are you so convinced he has an agenda?” Neil asks. 

“Why are you so convinced he doesn’t?” 

___

In AP Calculus, a girl Neil has never seen before in his life sits down next to him and smiles at him as though they’ve just come from reading each other’s diaries. Neil turns and looks behind him. There’s no one else there. 

“Neil,” the girl says warmly. 

Neil says, “Um,” but he supposes he is universally and permanently Neil now. There’s no use denying it. 

“I was at your party?” the girl says. “Friday.” 

“Oh,” he says. “Why?” 

Confusion freezes her face for just a second, the warmth of her smile briefly chilled in the sudden stillness of her features. She recovers fast, though, laughing and laying a hand on Neil’s forearm. “You’re so funny.” 

Is he? That would be news to him. 

“Anyway,” she says, stepping right through his silence. “I heard about the...you know.” 

“Not really.” 

“You know,” she says significantly, leaning closer to him across the aisle. 

Neil turns his attention back to double-checking his homework. 

“The _thing_ ,” she whispers. “With Minyard.” 

“Which Minyard?” Neil asks. 

“Oh, uh.” 

“There are two of them,” Neil points out. “Do people not know that?” 

“No, we do!” she says. “I mean, I do. I just don’t know—I heard about the _thing_ , but I wasn’t sure which one…” 

“Doesn’t sound like you heard much,” Neil observes. “Probably not worth talking about.” 

She seems to collapse into herself on her exhale. “Yeah. I guess not.” 

___

Tuesday morning, one of the track and field guys sidles up next to Neil’s locker and grins winningly at him, his hands shoved into his pockets. “Hey, man.” 

“Hey,” Neil says. “Soto?” 

The guy’s grin actually softens a bit at that; less blinding, more sincere. “Suarez. I just wanted to offer you a belated welcome to Grimke athletics.” 

“Thanks,” Neil says. He slots his still new-looking copy of _Candide_ in between his science and speech notebooks and gives the guy another look, cautiously optimistic. Baseball people are intolerable, basketball people only marginally less so, and Neil would rather gnaw off his own arm than listen to a hockey player explain why their sport is superior to exy, but track and field? Neil can get behind that. “Hurdles, right?” 

“Yeah.” The guy’s smile turns up in wattage. “Every time I see you play, I tell Coach we have to recruit you.” 

This draws Neil’s interest. “Do they let you double up on sports?” 

Suarez laughs. “Some people. You’ve got a bunch of hardasses on that team though, don’t you?“ 

“Do we?” Neil asks, surprised. Sure, they’re dedicated, and sure, exy consumes a lot of them, and sure, he and Kevin double their weekly practices, but he doesn’t know if he’d say— 

“Kevin Day?” the guy says, interrupting Neil’s thoughts. “Riko Moriyama. Dan Wilds. Andrew Minyard.” 

The idea that Andrew might be some kind of hardass exy fanatic makes Neil laugh. The guy seems to take this as a good sign, because he shuffles a little closer, drops his voice, and leans in conspiratorially. “You gotta tell me—what’s Kevin really like?” 

“Really like?” Neil asks. 

“Yeah. I know he’s like the golden boy of exy but, you get it, sometimes you hear things.” 

“What kind of things?” 

“You know,” the guy says again, meaningfully. “Sometimes guys like that just have to be the best. Even if they’re not. Whatever it takes.” 

Neil jerks his head towards the guy, frowning. “You’re talking about Kevin?” 

Suarez smiles again, though this time it narrows, sharper and hungry. “I heard he’s not thrilled about how good you are.” 

“How jealous is the dumb fuck who came up with that story?” Neil asks. 

“Oh,” Suarez says. He takes a little half step back, the glee in his face slackening into surprise. “I mean, I just heard it around.” 

“Here’s what you can tell ‘around,’” Neil says. “If any of us are good, it’s because Kevin Day won’t let us be any less.” 

“Hey man,” Suarez says. He lifts his hands, palms facing Neil in surrender. “Sorry. I get it, he’s your boy.” 

Something about that annoys the shit out of Neil. He tells himself it’s not worth sharpening his tongue on this blatant fishing expedition. He shuts his locker with a snap. “None of us really give a shit what any of you think. But if someone asks, you can tell them Kevin doesn’t have to do anything extra to make people think he’s the best. He just has to play.” 

“Yeah,” Suarez says weakly. “Sorry, man.” 

Neil’s eyes flick past him and catch Andrew’s across the hall. Andrew tips his head milimeters to the side and gently raises one eyebrow. An offer: _need me to deal with him?_ Neil shakes his head no. The corners of his mouth turn up entirely on their own. He doesn’t turn his attention back to Suarez when he says, politely, “Nice meeting you.” 

At practice that afternoon, Dan collapses heavily onto the bench next to Neil and grins at him irrepressibly. “I heard you put the fear of god into Gabriel Suarez earlier.” 

“What?” 

“He said he tried to talk to you about the team and that you were terrifying.” 

“I wasn’t,” Neil protests. “I just told him the gossip about Kevin was dumb.” 

“There’s gossip?” Kevin asks, poking his head and bare torso out from behind his locker. “About me?” 

“It’s nothing. Just jealous bullshit.” 

Dan laughs and bumps their shoulders together. “We’re very lucky to have you.” 

“It’s just the truth,” Neil says. 

Her smile warms. “Telling the truth isn’t always that easy.” 

And, well. That’s something Neil has always known. 

___

By the middle of the week, Neil has lost the capacity to be surprised by these encounters. So, when the goth kid in front of him turns as he’s reaching for a bottle of water and says, “Fuck, marry, kill: Kevin Day, Andrew Minyard, Jean Moreau,” Neil doesn’t even blink. 

“What’s your name?” he asks. 

“Scotty.” 

“Well, Scotty,” Neil says, smiling coldly. “I guess I’d start by killing you.” 

He means it. It’s tempting. 

Scotty’s face distorts into awkward anguish. He quickly occupies himself, to Neil’s great satisfaction, with _minding his own fucking business_. Behind Neil, Jeremy chokes on a laugh and tries to hide it by coughing loudly into his hand. 

“People keep _talking_ to me,” Neil complains. 

“You threw the party of the year,” Jeremy says. 

“I didn’t throw anything. I was invaded.” 

Jeremy’s wide smile is anything but sympathetic. “You were mysterious. Now they’ve been to your house. They’ve been inside your medicine cabinet. You’re more approachable.” 

“They’re wrong,” Neil grumbles. “I’m not.” 

“A lot of gossip came out of that party,” Jeremy says mildly. “People are desperate for it to be true.” 

Neil has heard. He would have needed to carefully schedule his itinerary at a three-day drug-fueled orgy to actually accomplish everything he allegedly did that night. He grabs a chocolate milk for Andrew and shoves his tray down the line, glaring at the crisply straightened hair of the nosy goth ahead of him. 

“Hey,” Jeremy says quietly. There’s still sunshine in his voice, but it sounds different than Neil’s ever heard it. Careful. More constrained. Neil turns and narrows his eyes warily. Jeremy clears his throat and flashes another grin. “I just wanted to check in on you. I know things got a little tense with you guys.” 

You guys. Neil remembers finding Jean drinking with Jeremy and Renee, the warring guilt and concern on his face. There’d been an apology written in the way Jean had warmed him against the cold, but he knows they’re still not on the same page about the issue. Jean thinks Neil needs protection from Andrew. Neil knows he’s never needed it less. 

“Just a difference of opinion.” Neil shrugs and shuffles slowly to the side, letting more space stretch between him and goth Scotty with the death wish. 

“It can be tough,” Jeremy says with a cheerful nonchalance that doesn’t quite carry its own weight. “Balancing friendships once you start dating someone. Figuring out how to make sure no one feels left out.” 

Left out? Who would feel left out? Jeremy? Neil likes Jeremy, but they’ve never hung out that much outside of group stuff. Jean has, though. Maybe that’s what this is: they’re spending too much time with Neil’s closest friends and not enough with Jean’s. 

“Sorry,” he says with genuine apology. “I didn’t realize. We should hang out more, definitely. That beach thing turned into everyone and—“ 

Jeremy interrupts, laughing, though his face is pained. “Neil, we’re good. I’m not feeling neglected.” He pauses, then shifts into that confusing tone again and says, “I see plenty of Jean.” 

“Good,” Neil says, relieved. “I thought you were going to suggest a double date or something.” 

“Nope. I’m extremely single.” 

For a split second, Neil thinks about offering him Jean. Jeremy wouldn’t exactly tell Riko to go fuck himself, but he has his own equally effective methods. Then, Neil remembers that everyone thinks Neil is Jean’s actual boyfriend and not just camouflage and that typically one does not delegate their partner to someone else. 

Jeremy hooks a hand over Neil’s shoulder and grins affably at him. “I just meant, uh. It seems like Andrew—I mean, you and Andrew have been pretty close.” 

Neil frowns. 

“And Kevin, of course,” Jeremy adds. 

“Yeah,” Neil agrees slowly. “Wait, do you think they feel left out?” 

“No.” Jeremy squeezes. “Nevermind. Just making conversation.” 

___

Thursday creeps toward its end with Neil having avoided all but one unsolicited conversation. He’d been cornered at the urinal. Not a great place to be asked if he’d seen any “action” at the party. He’s pretty sure it hadn’t really been a question. 

Now, with the final bell having run and the initial frenzy of adolescent freedom having bubbled over, it should be safe. He perches on the brick half-wall that encloses the landing of the short steps behind the school, waiting for Andrew to emerge and judgmentally lead him to practice with Kevin. 

Neil hasn’t walked even once to that gym for an extra practice without the weight of Andrew’s resigned disappointment grinding along beside him. 

He relaxes too soon, though, and is caught. The sitting was his mistake—the girl in front of him has approached and stepped close to Neil’s knees before he can slide himself off the wall and escape. He should have stayed on his toes. He’s gotten complacent. 

“Hi,” the girl says. “You’re Neil Josten.” 

“Unfortunately.” 

She politely grimaces at him and then half-turns to point at a group of guys clumped around one of the stone tables. Neil had clocked them earlier but not paid any special attention. She says, “You see those two? Keith and Darren?” 

“Sure,” he says. 

“What do you think?” she asks. 

“About what?” 

“Keith and Darren,” she says patiently. 

Does he know this girl? He can’t really place her. She has an artfully messy pile of dark curls on her head. Her tawny skin matches the amber of her eyes. Standard well-off kid’s backpack, Airpods dangling from the key ring hooked over her middle finger. Allison would like the shiny floral jacket, Neil thinks. 

But, no. Neil has no idea who she is. He says, “I don’t know those guys.” 

The girl sighs. “Keith’s in the Mallrat shirt. The hot one. Darren’s the one with his phone up. The really hot one.” 

Neil looks at the guys, both of whom are virtually indistinguishable from the others clustered around. They still seem wholly unremarkable to anyone other than themselves. He turns back to the girl and squints at her, ducking closer to see what’s up with her pupils, just in case she’s on something. “I see them,” he says, “but I don’t understand the question.” 

“You’re supposed to be good at this,” she huffs, craning her neck back so that Neil can’t get a good look at her eyes. “Relationship advice or whatever.” 

Drugs, Neil thinks. This is why you’re supposed to just say no. 

“Listen to me,” Neil says firmly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“ _God_.” She does that thing Kevin does sometimes, where she looks straight up like that’s where they’ve printed Neil’s user manual, but she has definitely not earned it the way Kevin has. Neil is mildly offended. She looks at him again, this time squaring her shoulders the way Wymack does when he’s been dealing with Neil’s bullshit for too long. All of this disapproval feels way too intimate to him. “Which one should I go out with?” 

The question is so absurd that it’s actually unfair of her to ask it. He knows nothing about these guys. He knows nothing about her. And even if he did, he wouldn’t give a shit which one she chose. Explaining all of that would eat up a lot more of his time, though, so he gives the guys another quick look and says, “Go out with Keith.” 

“Keith?” she asks, her nose wrinkling in surprise. “Why him?” 

“He has interests,” Neil says, nodding towards the guy’s shirt. “Other than himself. And you said he wasn’t the hottest one so that probably makes him more tolerable than the one you said is hotter and hasn’t stopped looking at himself on his phone for this entire bizarre conversation.” 

Neil watches her gaze thoughtfully at the guys, his metaphorical fingers crossed that she’ll take this obviously very significant decision somewhere else to ponder. He’s saved from what may be another fifteen minutes of conversation by Andrew appearing beside them. The girl has about five inches on him, so Andrew has to look up a bit to cooly blow a mouthful of smoke at her. When she steps back in surprise, Andrew uses the opportunity to push between them. It jostles her back another foot or so, but Andrew keeps going, taking the stairs quickly and heading off to the left. 

Relieved, Neil hops off the wall and jogs after him; behind him, the girl calls, “Thanks, Neil! That really helped!” 

Andrew leads him towards the utility side of the school—around the corner of an outbuilding, over a low concrete partition, past the HVAC units, and to a private stretch of wall in the corner of the lot where the school buses spend most of their days. Neil leans against the rough stucco and watches as Andrew pulls a small, smooth cylinder out of his pocket. 

“Are you vaping?” Neil asks. 

They both look down at the pen, then Andrew shrugs and lifts it to inhale. He blows the smoke at Neil and says, “I can’t keep a lit cigarette in my pocket.” 

“Mint chocolate?” Neil guesses. 

Andrew shrugs and inhales again. Before he can exhale, Neil tugs at the front of his shirt to draw him closer. This time, the aroma is much stronger. Neil was right. Mint chocolate. 

“Did you bring me here just so I could watch you vape, or can I kiss you?” 

He gets no answer other than the heated intensity of the eyes Andrew drops to his mouth and the easy step Andrew takes into Neil’s space when his fingers tangle up more in the soft knit of Andrew’s shirt. Neil kisses the groove Andrew’s smirk has pressed into the side of his mouth, his cheekbone, the slope of his jaw, feather-light and sweet, but he’s ready for it when Andrew winds a hand into his hair and licks into his mouth. 

___

Sunday morning dawns chilly and overcast, the sickly gray light in the room doing more creeping than flooding. Neil pries his sticky eyes open and blinks until Andrew comes into focus. He doesn’t remember them falling asleep. They’d wasted half of a movie rental making out on the couch, with Neil braced above Andrew and Andrew’s hands pushing under Neil’s clothes anywhere he could reach. He doesn’t really remember the move to the bedroom either, but the need to be touching had chased after them—more time kissing until Neil’s mouth was raw, Andrew’s bare chest against his own, Andrew driving him methodically over the edge and then following close behind. They’d wiped streaks of cum off Neil’s stomach and curled up like parentheses, enclosing between them not words but a silent trust. 

It doesn’t look like Andrew has moved since then. His right hand is under the pillowcase, ready with a knife that isn’t there; the other is curled around an extra pillow held tight to his torso like armor. Neil thinks about the all the boundaries Andrew had tried desperately to hold, intact only in the deliberate marks carved into his skin, about the half-dozen times Andrew had checked the orientation of the door’s lock, and rolls out of bed to go channel his sudden, volcanic burst of rage into trying to make a halfway decent cup of coffee. 

Andrew claims that the Keurig is idiot-proof, but Neil lives to defy expectations. He googles the instructions, carefully measures the water, carefully pushes in the pod Andrew likes best, and hovers as it hums and clicks. When it’s done, he reaches for the sugar spoon and scoops the fine white granules into the cup, his eyes closed, trying to remember how many trips the spoon has taken all the times Neil has watched as Andrew sways absently at the counter. After that, it’s just a matter of replicating the color with the sugar cookie flavored coffee creamer Andrew says only shows up around the holidays. 

He’d known Andrew wouldn’t sleep through him getting out of bed, but he’s still pleased to see he’s timed it right when Andrew steps into the kitchen, fitting himself to Neil’s back and hooking his chin over Neil’s shoulder to watch him pour the last drops of creamer into the mug. 

“Coffee,” Neil says. “No promises.” 

Andrew hums and presses a kiss to the side of Neil’s neck before stepping back and taking the proffered cup. Neil tries to play it cool, but something in his chest loosens when Andrew takes a sip and nods in approval. 

  
Neil would usually go for a run, but they’re going to meet Kevin and head to Riko’s in a couple of hours, so he’s going to need to conserve energy for that. And, if he’s being honest with himself, he feels a fierce urge to stay by Andrew’s side. 

“Do you want to go for a walk?” Neil asks. “There’s a very scenic retention pond I could take you to.” 

“Are you allergic to sleeping in?” Andrew asks mildly. 

Neil bites his lip sheepishly, trying to tamp down on the fond glow that wants to spread across his face. “Kinda. Will you come?” 

Andrew doesn’t say yes, but he does roll his eyes and take his coffee with him to the guest room instead of flopping on the couch. Neil lets himself smile so hard his cheeks ache with it as he hustles to his room to change. 

By the time they pull into Wymack’s driveway a couple of hours later, Neil has readied himself to interfere with and ruin any kind of psychological warfare Riko may run on Kevin. He opens the passenger door to get out and help load equipment, but Kevin pushes it shut on his way past and heaves his gear into the trunk, which Andrew has popped open. The car rocks with the impact when he slams it shut, and again when Kevin pulls open the back door and slides onto the bench seat. 

“I’m ready,” Kevin says grimly. “We’re going to show him what we can do.” 

Neil turns enough to catch Kevin’s eyes. The gleam of determination in them sparks against Neil’s resolve, flickering to life. Protect Kevin _and_ crush Riko at exy. 

“Speak for yourself,” Andrew says. “I need to catch up on Twitter.” 

“You ruined it,” Kevin complains. 

Andrew hums. “The climax of your inspirational sports movie? My bad.” 

Kevin’s answering, “Asshole,” is more amused than outraged, and even Neil feels a little of the tension in his body loosening. This isn’t a big deal. They’re going to play exy with Riko—whatever Kevin has internalized, they don’t actually need his approval or validation. 

The conviction of his optimism lasts until they round the last curve of Riko’s ostentatious driveway and see Jean’s mother’s Mercedes tucked neatly against the edge of the paving. 

“What’s he doing here?” Kevin asks. 

Neil says, “I don’t know.” 

He hops out of the car as soon as Andrew glides to a stop and viciously shoves the gear into Park. Jean unfolds himself from the driver’s side, sunglasses on, tall and lean in snug track pants and a shirt that clings to his arms and chest. He tosses his phone back into the car and straightens, flashing a wide, welcoming smile at Neil. 

“Hey,” Neil says. He hears the Kia’s doors slam shut behind him and picks up his pace, jogging to Jean and stepping into a hug. He hisses, “What are you doing here?” 

“I’m here to play,” Jean says lightly. “Am I not welcome?” 

Frankly, no. There are enough tensions ricocheting around without adding Jean to the mix. He feels the mass of ‘protect Kevin’ determination start to divide into smaller portions: protect Jean, defend Andrew, keep Jean and Andrew apart, keep Jean and Riko apart. 

“Of course,” Neil says unconvincingly. “But why would you want to be?” 

“For you. I can make sure they don’t steamroll you.” 

“I’m not—” Neil starts, intending to tell Jean that he’s not worried about being steamrolled, and that Kevin and Andrew already have his back, and that he’s not even sure it needs watching in the first place, but before he can say any of that Jean’s attention shifts over his shoulder. The smile stays stubbornly in place, but the glint of his teeth suddenly looks a lot more predatory than it does happy. Neil turns to find Andrew approaching, his gait casual but his expression hard and hostile. 

Neil has never seen him look less amused. 

“Hello, Kevin. Andrew,” Jean says smoothly. 

Kevin’s so focused on the loom of the house in front of him that his acknowledging nod reads like an afterthought. Andrew, on the other hand, is rigid when he steps up beside Neil. Their arms brush where Andrew’s is hanging not quite casually. Neil can almost feel Andrew’s fingers twitching towards his armbands with longing. 

“You’re right where you aren’t wanted again,” Andrew says flatly. “That’s a bad habit.” 

“Didn’t you just say that you don’t tell Neil who to spend time with? Or was that a lie?” 

Neil realizes that conversation Jean and Andrew had might have been a little darker than he’d guessed. 

“It’s fine,” Neil says briskly. He curls his fingers and rubs them reassuringly against the back of Andrew’s fist, but he gets a punishingly sharp look in response and withdraws his hand, shoving it awkwardly into his pocket instead. 

And then it gets worse. 

The front door swings open. 

“Oh, hello,” Riko calls, delighted. “Won’t this be fun.” 

He’s wrong. It isn’t fun at all. Or maybe it is, for Riko, who’s slightly crazed grin only gets wider as they file tensely back to the gym. Neil plants himself stubbornly behind Riko on the walk, when Jean slides quickly into place behind him, it leaves Kevin third and Andrew bringing up the rear. Neil’s pretty sure he’ll pay for that in hits to his padding once Andrew gets a racquet in his hands, but so be it. Neil has one task today, and that’s to plant his feet on whatever hold Riko has over Kevin (and now Jean) and stomp on it until his grip loosens. 

Riko keeps up a flow of light conversation as the rest of them silently put on padding, silently lace their court shoes, and silently complete their usual routines of stretching. Neil catches his name a few times but doesn’t do more than nod absently, more focused on the cloud of uncertainty starting to drift across the light of Kevin’s earlier confidence. The fouler the mood gets, the more Riko seems to blossom, so Neil finally shakes himself out of it, straightens, and flashes his own insincere smile at Riko. Kevin looks horrified. Neil tries to loosen it up into something less homicidal. 

“This is great,” Neil says. “Kevin, what do you think we should do first?” 

And then they’re off. 

It’s a fractured practice, with Neil never really able to focus on his game. Instead, he grinds his way through drills that should be easy, too distracted by the helpful little comments Riko sends Kevin and Jean’s way to nail his targets the way he should. Riko seems too wary of Andrew’s heavy gaze to put his hands on Kevin, but when he ‘coaches’ Jean it seems to require an awful lot of touching. Neil can’t keep going over there to interfere, so he does the next best thing—a bad job. The worse he gets, the more time Riko spends hovering over Neil and helping him do better. It works, of course—when Riko is with him, he can actually concentrate. 

So he keeps Riko with him, dropping his shoulder when he shouldn’t, holding his wrists stiffly, not pivoting when he’s supposed to, all so Riko can cluck and lightly chide and use firm hands to adjust Neil’s stance. 

Riko is an asshole, but he’s not stupid, so there’s no way he believes Neil actually needs this much help on the fundamentals. His voice turns teasing, his fingers linger, and Neil thinks he catches Riko sending self-satisfied looks towards the other side of the court. 

Allison would call this flirting, but she’d be wrong. Neil isn’t quite sure what motivates Riko yet, but he knows it isn’t desire for him. Under normal circumstances, Neil would just tell Riko to fuck off. But this isn’t normal circumstances; they’re here, in Riko’s kingdom, proving some jumbled mess of points. 

Drills last no more than ten minutes before Andrew slaps his racquet against the wall loudly and says, “This is boring.” 

“Drills are boring?” Riko asks. 

“Watching you wave your tiny dick around is boring,” Andrew corrects. “If you idiots want to play so badly, let’s play.” 

Riko smiles toothily at him. “Let’s play,” he agrees. “We’ll see which of us can score on you first. Jean, you can try too. Might improve your passing.” 

Neil would put a stop to the no-holds-barred assault on Andrew’s goal that follows, if the dark mass at Andrew’s center didn’t seem to grow and crackle and drive him harder each time he slams someone’s ball back at them. Neil had expected Riko to go hard to prove he’s the best. He’d expected Kevin to go hard to prove he’s just as good, if not better, than Riko. 

He hadn’t expected Jean to fire on the goal like his life depends on it. 

He definitely hadn’t expected Andrew to give a shit. 

But Andrew shuts down the goal with ruthless efficiency, denying each of them as they take their turn to come at him: Riko with the trick shots that try to sneak around Andrew’s defenses; Kevin with carefully calculated angles designed to target the most vulnerable parts of the goal; Jean with brutally hard shots, half of which Andrew has to block with his body. Neil tries to balance it out by taking it easy, lobbing softballs at Andrew that get batted out of the air without Andrew having to move a muscle. That just adds to the dangerous energy seeping out from the visor of Andrew’s helmet, though—he starts firing those balls right back at Neil’s feet. 

It sucks. Neil watches Andrew push himself until he’s dripping, peeling off his helmet every few shots to wipe the sweat out of his eyes. Riko lines himself up and takes a shot right between Andrew’s feet, trying to rebound it off the floor, but Andrew sees it coming and sweeps it out of the way before it can land. 

When it’s Neil’s turn again he steps up, looks at Andrew, and slings his racquet over his shoulder. “I need a break,” Neil says. “Water. The bathroom.” 

Andrew glares. 

“Sure,” Riko says graciously. “Let’s take five.” 

“Ten,” Neil says. 

The look Andrew gives him is definitely not gratitude. 

Neil figures he needs to at least pretend to need the bathroom, so he heads that way for a breather. The shuffle of feet that picks up behind him is recognizable as Jean; Neil doesn’t look back, but Jean manages to dart in front of him to open and hold the door into the changing rooms. He hesitates before following Neil into the bathroom, so Neil keeps his hand on the knob and gestures impatiently until Jean shuffles inside. 

“What?” Neil asks. 

Jean winces. “I think I may have made things worse by coming.” 

“Yeah. No shit.” 

“I just thought…” 

“You’re going to have to finish that sentence. I have no idea why you thought this was a good idea.” 

Jean rakes his hand through his sweat-damp hair self-consciously. The bathroom isn’t tiny, but they’re still in padding and Jean seems to shrink the room, looming the way he does. When he speaks, Jean says, “I was worried you’d be too focused on Kevin and Andrew and let Riko get to you.” 

“Riko can’t get to me,” Neil says. “Isn’t that why we’re dating?” 

Jean grimaces. “I think you underestimate—“ 

“You think I underestimate everything,” Neil interrupts tiredly. “I think you underestimate me. What’s so scary about Riko, anyway? What do you think he’s going to do to you?” 

“There were a few kids. Three, I think. You should sit.” 

Neil looks pointedly around them. The only sitting surface is the toilet. Jean makes a face at it and then holds Neil by the arms, slow-dancing them in a small circle. In full padding. In a bathroom. Once he has Neil’s back to the counter he pats it, so Neil obediently hops up onto it. If nothing else, it gets him a few inches closer to Jean’s height. 

“The first was this kid he’d known since elementary school. We were in seventh grade. I don’t know what the kid did—it had to be something stupid, because we were twelve. But one day Riko was just done with him. By the end of the week, the kid was totally ostracized. Everyone knew every embarrassing thing he’d ever done in his life. Other kids were lying and saying he’d picked fights or stolen their things or said something inappropriate to them. He got detention and then suspended and we heard rumors about expulsion and then he just disappeared. Never saw or heard from him ever again. It happened again in ninth grade. He asked a girl to a dance and she said no. There were more rumors and all these naked pictures everyone said were of her. She denied it but people kept talking about some birthmark they said proved it was her and then these guys started sharing all these screenshots of nasty texts they said she sent. She cried every day at lunch and then she disappeared, too. All of her social media was gone. Her brother was a grade ahead, but all of his online stuff was gone at the same time. They transferred schools or moved or something. The next time it was this guy at another school who pissed Riko off at a game. We didn’t know it was happening until we found out he’d been taken to the hospital for an overdose. His dad worked at my mom’s company in a different department and told her that the kid had been viciously bullied for months. The tires on the family cars were slashed. The cops found drugs in his locker. After the overdose, they moved to a different state. And Riko _knows_ me. He could ruin my life in a day.” 

It’s a lot to process. And it’s a type of cruelty Neil struggles to contextualize. Moving on to avoid a bad situation isn’t anything new to him, but he knows this is different. He’s never had anything to stay for. But now, he has roots. And secrets. A present and a past. Leaving would be agonizing. He likes to think he could ignore the whispers if Riko found out about his parents and his uncle and all the things Neil has done and made them public knowledge. He knows he wouldn’t be alone, either—the Foxes wouldn’t turn on him. At least, Andrew and Kevin wouldn’t. But he’s not everyone. He’s not Jean. 

“Okay,” Neil says after a minute, nodding. He’s chopped up Jean’s story and neatly stacked the pieces to be unpacked later. “I get it.” 

“You do?” 

“Yeah. He’s an arrogant, entitled, twisted coward. He’s got a grip on your balls and you have a real reason to be afraid of pissing him off. I get it.” 

“But you’ll still defy him.” 

“I’m not defying him,” Neil says. “I don’t give a shit what he wants. If he doesn’t like what I do, that’s his problem.” 

Neil extracts a promise from Jean that he’ll stop trying to antagonize Andrew and leads them back onto the court just in time to see Riko and Kevin deciding on the next activity: a little scrimmage game. Andrew in the goal, Jean on defense. Neil insists that he and Riko play first so that Kevin can watch and coach. Riko seems to take this as a signal that Neil wants to spend more time with him, but Neil’s okay with people deluding themselves if it keeps them quiet. 

This time, Andrew stands placidly in the goal and hangs Jean out to dry. Something about their talk in the bathroom seems to have invigorated Jean. He keeps going toe-to-toe with Riko, holding him off, only to have Andrew indifferently watch the ball slam against the wall when Riko finally takes a shot. Whenever Neil gets the ball, he aims it straight at Andrew’s racquet, trying to get it to rebound—Andrew picks up on it and at least plays along with that, holding the stick firmly to give Neil an unyielding surface to target. 

When they stop to let Kevin play, Neil agrees to reprise his childhood role as backliner, too, so that the game won’t be quite as stacked. He hasn’t trained on it in years, but maybe he can trip Riko up a little. 

It’s useless. None of it is fun or productive. Riko’s gym is beautiful, but it’s soulless. It’s not exy they’re playing. It’s some horrible game of ego that Neil doesn’t know the rules to. Nobody can win it. 

When it finally ends, Neil is exhausted. He’s sweating and stressed and annoyed. Kevin was amazing, but Riko doesn’t seem to have noticed at all. Worse, when they cluster around the bench to rehydrate and breathe, Riko steps up next to Neil and splays a hand out on his back, sliding it up to squeeze at Neil’s shoulder. He does it the way Kevin does, thumb and index finger pressing and pinching to loosen the muscle, but it makes Neil’s skin crawl. He shrugs it off but Riko, undaunted, ruffles Neil’s dripping hair. 

“Hey, asshole,” Andrew says. His voice is emotionless but Neil knows he’s done playing around. “If you put that hand on him one more time, you’re not getting it back.” 

Riko goes rigid beside Neil, but he recovers quickly. “This one?” he queries, lifting it and examining it innocently. “What if I use the other?” 

“Try it,” Andrew says. “Let’s find out.” 

Riko doesn’t try it. He turns his shark-like smile on Jean instead and says, “Shouldn’t you be the one getting jealous?” 

Jean pales, but squares his shoulders. Before he can make some kind of ill-advised attempt to stand his ground—literally the opposite of their deal—Neil interrupts clumsily. “What did you think of the practice, Kevin? Any notes?” 

“No,” Kevin says. “None. Everyone was great. Riko, you could learn a little teamwork. Shall we go?” He already has his gear packed, of course, so he hefts his bag over his shoulder and sails out of the gym before Riko can get another word in. 

___

Neil sleeps fitfully that night, struggling to keep still. Nightmares roll one into another, leaving his half-sleeping body to restlessly form jagged shapes in a futile effort to find a position that doesn’t make his bones ache. He wakes abruptly from a nightmare of his father’s face pressed close, nose-to-nose with Neil. Nathan’s eyes are all blue, no pupil; his angry mouth gapes impossibly open as he screams and screams and screams. When Neil jerks upright, though, the screaming doesn’t stop. It echoes through his apartment, deafening him, blocking out the rustle of his comforter and the wheeze of his own breathing. He manages to suck in a lungful of air, chokes on the scent of smoke, and thinks _Mom_. Panicked, he throws himself out of bed and runs for his life. He stops only long enough to shove his feet into his slides before he’s through the front door, thundering down the stairs and darting into the parking lot. His flight is cut abruptly short by a crowd of twenty or so of his neighbors, mundane in nightgowns and bathrobes. They’re all bunched around, chattering nervously and staring up at the building. 

The adrenaline had moved faster than his mind. Neil stares at the milling people and tries to understand why they’re down here. Finally, the shape of the screaming forms itself into something recognizable. The fire alarm, Neil realizes groggily. Somebody tripped the fire alarm. He looks down at his bare arms and realizes that he hadn’t grabbed anything on his way out. Not his coat, not his cell phone, not even his car keys. It’s still dark outside, the ozone chill of the night not yet ceding to dawn, and the thin, soft fabric of his pajama bottoms isn’t doing much against the icy breeze of the early October morning. 

He thinks about going back upstairs to get his stuff, but the apartment complex’s security guard is already there, stationed nervously at the bottom of the stairs and waving his arms around more than seems necessary. Red lights pulse through the night as the fire trucks pull up, their deafening clanging sirens adding to the relentless howl of the alarms. 

Neil pulls his arms in close to his chest and resigns himself to a long, cold wait. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andrew listens to loud music. Jean makes a house-call. Neil has a heart-to-heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ongoing thanks to the people who put up with far too many screen caps and pasted text chunks from me. 
> 
> The song Andrew listens to in the car is Plastic, by New Order, and it was brilliantly selected by @justadreamfox, who is a most excellent musical taste consultant.
> 
> Extra special thanks to @lemonicee for helping me write the porny ending.

_”You guys. I am shook.”_

_”Do we still say that?_

_“Shut up. I saw something. And I’m going to tell you two about it, but_ only _you two, because if this gets out my literal life will literally end. And I’ll know it was you, so I’ll have my mom reveal you as my murderers at my funeral. Pinky promise.”_

_“Pinky promise, you drama queen.”_

_“Me too.”_

_“I saw Andrew Minyard and Neil Josten making out.”_

_“Oh my god. Tell us everything.”_

_“Okay, so. I was taking the really long way to lacrosse practice because, you know how Greta and Victoria are always at the tennis courts before I pass by? Well, we’re in a fight and I wanted to avoid them. So I was cutting through that weird parking lot where they keep the buses and—there they were.”_

_“Kissing?”_

_“Understatement. This was full-on making out.”_

_“I think I already said ‘tell us everything.’”_

_“They were up against a wall. It was...hot. At first I thought it was the other twin, because Andrew never lets anyone touch him ever—”_

_“Yeah, I know a guy who grabbed his arm when he tripped in the hall. Andrew punched him.”_

_“Exactly. But then I saw the armbands. And it was weird because they were all over each other.”  
_

_“Was it amazing?”_

_“I mean, kissing Andrew Minyard is now on my bucket list. But that isn’t even the crazy part. He looked up and_ saw _me.”_

_“How are you alive?”_

_“I don’t know. He just looked me dead in the eyes, pulled Neil’s hair, and started kissing his neck. I ran away.”_

_“Well, holy shit. I thought Neil was with that super hot french guy.”_

_“He is. I saw them kissing the other day. Well, kind of. I guess I saw cheek kissing.”_

_“God, how do you even choose? Jean Moreau or Andrew Minyard?”_

_“I mean, if one of them is kissing you like your mom and the other is making you make sex noises at school, the choice seems pretty easy.”_

_“And you’re sure it wasn’t Aaron?”_

_“I’m 100% sure. I heard Neil say his name.”_

_“You were that close?”_

_“It was that loud.”_

___

Neil finds an isolated tree to lean against. It gives him a good view of any likely angles of approach and, bonus, blocks a tiny bit of the early eastern breeze. One of the fire fighters gives him two of those weird silver space blankets and he settles in between a couple of the thick roots creeping out from his tree, soothed by the press of the trunk against his back and the gnarled bark wood against his hips. Arranging the blankets is a crinkly affair, but he gets them wrapped around himself pretty thoroughly and settles in to wait until they’ll let him back into his fucking apartment. 

The fire seems relatively contained, at least. Neil sees the flames licking out of the apartment a couple doors down from him. It bleeds into his neighbor’s place, but his own windows stay dark, exhaling only smoke. At some point, when the flickering glow doesn’t materialize in his place, he tips his head forward against his knees and sleeps in snatches, bobbing disoriented to the surface after short periods of deep submersion. Each time, the sky has lightened, transforming the shadowy shapes of the world around him into something murky but familiar. 

He jerks awake to the sense that something is wrong, that he’s in danger, that something has changed. One of the space blankets is sheared away by the wind during Neil’s panicked scramble; when he looks up, he finds Andrew standing over him and relaxes immediately. There’s something unfamiliar fading off of Andrew’s face. His shoulders are half-tense, caught in the moment of dropping. Neil’s neck hurts from craning back to see him, so he drops his gaze to Andrew’s restlessly twitching hand, fisted around his keys, which bristle like spikes between his white knuckles. 

“Hey,” Neil says, rubbing at his eyes. “What time is it?” 

“You didn’t pick up your phone,” Andrew says instead of answering. 

“It’s upstairs.” 

“Keys?” 

“Upstairs,” Neil admits sheepishly. 

“Coat?” 

That one seems obvious, so Neil doesn’t bother answering it. 

He watches Andrew’s illegible expression shift, and then Andrew is shrugging off his jacket and dropping it on top of Neil. The teeth of the zipper scrape against Neil’s nose before he can catch it, stinging his cold skin. 

“Get up. I’m taking you home.” 

Neil is getting the distinct impression that Andrew is furious at him. He drops the other blanket and hastily pulls the jacket on, slipping his arms through the smooth sleeve lining and inhaling the Andrew scent that is inseparable from the leather. It’s heavy, especially compared to Neil’s flimsy wind shields, but it shares the lingering warmth of Andrew’s body. Neil feels warm for the first time in probably hours. Neil doesn’t realize how stiff he is, how much of a toll huddling had taken, until he tries to stand and his numb, tingling legs almost collapse beneath him. 

Andrew scowls and hauls him upright by the lapels of his jacket. “I hate you.” 

“What else is new?” 

It’s not until Andrew walks him back across the expanse of grass towards the parking lot that Neil realizes there are still flashing lights everywhere. The reds and blues roll through the breaking dawn, reflecting off the sparse cars still lingering in the parking lot and echoing in the slick surface of the wet ground. The gathered crowd has dispersed, all gone to work or friends or hotels, Neil doesn’t know. Most of what’s left is people in uniform moving briskly between their vehicles and the charred building. Neil’s apartment still looks mostly okay from the ground, though the fire’s fingerprints creep a little closer to his window than he’d like. 

He sees it the way Andrew must have when he’d driven up. Something has definitely _happened_ here, though it’s obvious the action is long over. A lone ambulance, still in its hasty diagonal position, blocks the spot where Andrew usually parks his motorcycle. The windshield of Neil’s car is pocked with droplets of ashy water. It looks...not great. 

Andrew isn’t angry at him. Andrew had been afraid. 

Neil stops walking. As if they were tethered together, their cord already stretched to its limits, Andrew stops too. 

Neil says, “Andrew,” quietly, but the distance holds. Andrew doesn’t turn around. 

“I’m okay,” Neil says. “I’m sorry. I should have grabbed my phone.” 

Neil watches Andrew’s stiff, still back, the waffle-knit of his black shirt stretched across tight shoulders. He knows better than to try to touch yet, so he just waits, feeling the chill creep back into his legs, until Andrew finally moves—a tiny nod of his head before he starts walking again. Neil lets fatigue and his desire to be close pull him along in Andrew’s wake. 

In the car, Andrew cranks the heater and the stereo, connecting his phone and tapping at the screen with vicious movements until something electronic trembles through the air. The first notes are ethereal, shimmering mirage-like until the bottom drops out and the thrum of the song’s pulse erupts. It surges ahead and leaves Neil’s heartbeat faltering in its wake. The song is much too loud to talk over, but Neil would have kept his mouth shut anyway; he recognizes it as one Andrew wraps around himself when he’s feeling breakable. 

Neil tries, self-consciously, to create as much space for Andrew as possible. The press of glass around them is too close for privacy, so all Neil can do is keep his head tipped against the window and try not to look directly at Andrew’s profile or the reflexive drumming of his fingers against the wheel. 

The way Andrew drives, they’re pulling up to his house as the last notes of the song fade out. Nicky is already waiting on the front stoop in slippers and an oversized sweater, his arms crossed against the chill. Andrew shifts into reverse instead of park, his foot braced against the brake, still looking anywhere but Neil. He waits only long enough for Neil to make it to Nicky and step into a hug before squealing out of the driveway and taking off. 

___

Neil takes as much of Nicky’s worried fussing as he can before he retreats to the screened-in porch with a blanket and a heater and climbs very, very carefully onto Nicky’s spectacular fringed rainbow-striped hammock. Only the grip of his hand on the spreader bar keeps him from flipping completely over, but after a few small, jerky movements he manages to get centered and tuck the blanket around himself. He stays there, comfortably cocooned, napping on and off for the duration of three episodes of some podcast Nicky had insisted he’d love. The layers of sheer curtains hold most of the heat inside, the gentle sway of the hammock soothes him, and even though he remembers not one single word of the podcast, it’s the most relaxed he’s felt in weeks. Eventually, the sound of a car door closing echoes through the side yard and onto the porch. Andrew. Neil doesn’t know if Andrew is going to be ready to talk, or touch, or if he’s going to smother Neil with a pillow, but whatever new tension the prying uncertainty adds to his body releases when Andrew steps onto the porch. The wild violence is gone from Andrew’s eyes. He looks—not lighter, but looser. More in control. 

Neil shifts a little to the side and tugs the blanket out from under him, saying, “Get in?” 

There are at least a thousand universes in which Andrew would tell him to go fuck himself in response to that, but in this one, he toes off his shoes and squeezes between the hammock and the wall, sliding easily and confidently in next to Neil and sending the hammock into a gentle, calm rocking. 

“Show off,” Neil mutters. He moves over a little more, lifting his head up enough that Andrew can snake an arm beneath it and press against Neil’s side. Andrew is warm and solid and, when Neil breathes him in, smells a little like smoke. Neil burrows into him as much as he can without straight up rolling onto his side and velcroing himself to Andrew’s chest. Awkwardly, Andrew’s hand lands on the edge of the hammock, then on his own shoulder, then back on the hammock on the other side of Neil; Neil rolls his eyes and uses his thumb and index finger to pick it up and put it on his chest. 

“You’re home early,” Neil says, patting the back of Andrew’s hand encouragingly. 

“Skipped practice. Went to your place. Got your phone, clothes, laptop. Shoes. _Phone_.” 

“Is Kevin pissed?” 

“Nope.” 

“Were you too scary for Kevin to be pissed?” 

“Probably.” 

Andrew finally uncurls his fingers and splays them out on Neil’s chest, arranging them deliberately against the graphic on yet another stolen shirt. Telling Andrew that everything is okay won’t do anything. He needs to feel it for himself. 

“How bad did it look?” 

“Not bad,” Andrew says absently. “Some idiot down your hall forgot his bubble bath self-care candles and burned through two walls. Yours is mostly water damage. You’ll be here for a couple of weeks. Nicky’s talking about building an addition.” 

“But then where would we hold the ragers?” 

The truly blistering side-eye Andrew gives him eases the tiny, clenched part of Neil’s heart that was still worried. Neil lifts his hand and presses a fingertip to the bridge of Andrew’s nose, drawing a line up to trace the curve of a blond eyebrow. When Andrew’s forehead furrows, Neil drags the finger back and rubs the crease away. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Andrew orders. 

“Stop me.” 

Andrew catches Neil’s wrist in a vice grip, pulling it away from his face. For a second, Neil thinks he’s pushed too hard, too fast—that Andrew is going to shove him off or tip them both out of the hammock or remind Neil that he has no claim over Andrew and no right to look at him like that. 

But, when Andrew moves, it’s to pull Neil’s hand close to his heart and surge forward, sliding their mouths together entirely too hard. Neil’s lips flatten uncomfortably against his teeth and it takes a second to catch up with Andrew’s intensity, but he gets there, sucking in a breath before Andrew curls his fingers up in Neil’s hair and licks his mouth open. 

Andrew kisses like he can will Neil to stay alive. Like he can hold Neil in place with his mouth, pin him close and keep him there. It’s different than when Andrew tries to take him apart. It’s not Andrew trying to find all the places Neil will yield, it’s Andrew throwing himself against all the places he won’t, needing Neil to hold his ground and push back. It still takes Neil’s breath away. He gently wraps his fingers around Andrew’s wrist, his thumb pressed against the pulse point, and kisses Andrew until it ebbs into something less intense and they stop breathing in stolen, desperate gasps. 

Neil kisses lazily along the line of Andrew’s jaw while Andrew’s hand roams, his fingertips tracing hidden scars and mapping out the planes of muscle Neil’s been putting on after months of eating regularly and training with the Foxes. The sleeve of Andrew’s shirt is still loose on Neil’s upper arm, but he does his best to flex when Andrew’s fingertips dip beneath it. 

“I’m going to catch up,” Neil says lightly. “Then all my shirts will be too big for you.” 

“Not going to happen,” Andrew says. 

“It could.” 

“It won’t.” 

Neil hums consideringly. “Is that a personal challenge?” 

“No,” Andrew says matter-of-factly. “You don’t test yourself against the weights. You test yourself against yourself.” 

Neil, startled, tries to blink that statement into some kind of clarity. 

“I lift because I care about being strong,” Andrew explains. “You run because you care about being tough. I want muscle to win the fight. You want endurance so you can survive it.” 

He—is that right? Neil races through his memory, trying to find a time where he’s faced off against danger and thought he could _win_ against it. He comes up empty. All he’s ever hoped to do is get away and not die. Even now. He has ground to hold now, but he hasn’t _won_. He’s been allowed to live. 

Neil has no idea how to respond to that. There’s too much tied up in it. Too much running for him, too much not having the option to run for Andrew. 

Andrew walks right through the turmoil and out the other side. He holds his hand up, fingers splayed, until Neil lifts and lines up his own, pressing each of his fingertips to Andrew’s in sequence. Andrew steeples their fingers, holding the tension. “What are we doing tonight?” 

Neil answers automatically. “Nicky’s making caldo de pollo.” 

He watches as Andrew spreads their fingers apart wider until the arch reverses, pressing their palms together. When Andrew doesn’t say anything, Neil adds, “Can we make Aaron watch _Westworld_?” 

“You hate _Westworld_ ,” Andrew says absently as he slots their fingers together and folds his over the back of Neil’s hand. 

“Yeah, but not as much as he does.” 

Andrew smothers an amused noise against Neil’s wrist, entirely undercutting the censuring look on his face. Neil is about to call him out on it when he hears an awkward shuffling and a knock at the open door leading into the house. He jerks, startled, but Andrew keeps him steady by pulling their linked hands close to his chest. 

It’s just Jean, standing awkwardly half in and half out of the house, his knuckles still resting against the door frame. The absolute shock on his face makes Neil think _something’s wrong_ and _move_ , but Andrew’s thumb is still stroking easily along Neil’s index finger and the leg he has tangled with Neil’s stays loose and relaxed. 

“Sorry,” Jean says. “I drove Aaron home. Sorry, I didn’t—” 

Neil doesn’t know what to say, so he just watches dumbly as some of the shock falls away and is replaced with something like relief. And awkwardness. Intense awkwardness. Neil is as confused by what’s happening on Jean’s face as he is by the press of Andrew’s nose into his hair. Actually, how long has Jean been tucked out of sight, listening? How much did he hear? 

“I wanted to make sure you were okay,” Jean says softly. “Not because—just, after the fire. Andrew told us about the fire.” 

“I’m fine,” Neil says. “My place didn’t burn and I’m good here until it’s fixed.” 

“Yes,” Jean says. He must realize his hand is still up to knock because he drops it heavily and tries to find a place to put it, awkwardly folding his arm behind him and then hooking a finger through a belt before settling on cramming it into the front pocket of his hoodie. “I can see that. That’s good. I’m—I’m really happy to see that.” 

Andrew seems content to stay silent and let Jean dig this hole, so Neil follows his lead. Not because he wants to see Jean hit the bottom, but because he still has no idea how to respond to any of this. He frowns a little at the grimace on Jean’s face but gains no clarity at all when Jean laughs and pulls his hand out of his hoodie to scrub at his jaw. 

“Sorry,” Jean says again. “I was worried. But I’m glad to be wrong. I’m gonna go. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.” 

Jean takes a couple of awkward steps backward, then leans forward again to wave goodbye and disappears again. 

“That was weird,” Neil says once he’s sure he hears the front door close behind Jean. 

“He thought I’d have you tied up in the basement.” 

“You don’t have a basement.” 

“That’s your only problem with that idea?” 

“Wait,” Neil says. “Aaron’s home. Is he showering? I’m going to go run the hot water in all the sinks.” 

___

Neil doesn’t see his phone until Nicky herds him into the den with an armful of sheets and blankets. Andrew has plugged it in and left it on the little table beside the futon. A couple of taps at the phone bring up a long list of missed notifications, so Neil decides to just ignore it for now. 

He catches the sofa cushions Nicky tosses his way and stacks them semi-neatly in the corner, half-listening while Nicky chatters at him. 

“You can stay as long as you want,” Nicky says. “I mean that. You’re welcome here any time. You know we love you.” 

“Thanks,” Neil says. Nicky deserves something more effusive, but Neil doesn’t know how to give it to him. Instead, he takes the sheets from Nicky and watches as he unfolds the futon. 

“Listen. I’m probably signing my own death warrant here, but—” Nicky surreptitiously checks the door behind him and then turns back to Neil, lowering his voice. “I’m grateful that Andrew has you.” 

“Oh,” Neil says awkwardly. “I mean.” 

“It’s been so hard for him to let people in. He’s always so on guard. I know he has good reasons, but it hurts to watch. I’m just happy that he has someone he can be himself with.” 

“Yeah,” Neil agrees uncomfortably. Talking about Andrew’s feelings without Andrew present makes his skin crawl, but he knows that’s not what Nicky’s trying to do. This is the awkward mom routine and if Neil gets weird about it, it’s going to be a whole thing. Endure. Try not to squirm. Give nothing away. 

“But you,” Nicky says softly. “The first time I saw him with you, I knew you’d be different.” 

“Oh,” Neil says again. He feels like a fucking parrot. ‘ _Oh’_. ‘ _I mean’_. ‘ _Yeah’_. He can speak four languages but heart-to-heart is apparently not one of them. “We’re just—” 

Nicky waves the protest away. “I’m not prying. Anything they haven’t told me is none of my business. Whatever you and Andrew are to each other, it’s important. It means a lot. And—well, you look like you’re trying to will yourself to drop dead, so I won’t say anything else. Just that anything you need, you can come to us.” 

“Thanks,” Neil says, desperately hoping this is over. He’s had stab wounds less painful than this. “I can finish in here. If you need. To. You know.” 

“Sure,” Nicky laughs. “I can stop telling you how special you are and go cook.” 

The smiling shape Neil tries to make with his mouth turns into more of a grimace, which just makes Nicky laugh more and fuck up his hair on his way out. Neil closes and then locks the door after him, just in case. The futon is up against the wall, so wrestling the sheets onto the back of it involves a lot of kneeling and lifting and shoving and pulling. By the time he gets it on and flops onto his back, he feels like he’s earned the right to not check his phone. 

That lasts all of a minute before he sighs and gropes for it blindly, almost dropping it on his face when he finally gets his hands on it. The notifications panel is more crowded than he’s ever seen it, and it just looks worse when he unlocks the phone. Everyone he knows has called or sent him a text or both. The most recent is Jean’s _call me?,_ time stamped less than an hour earlier. Neil leaves that task on the to-do list and skims through the messages from the team. No one seems too worried—Andrew must have at least told everyone that Neil is fine. He gets to the bottom of the list and finds his messages with Andrew. In addition to the five missed calls from Andrew’s number, there are six texts spread over the twelve minute period Andrew must have spent looking for him that morning: 

_Neil_

_Where are you?_

_Neil?_

_Neil?_

_Josten_

_Why don’t you have your fucking phone_

The loosened thing inside Neil’s chest twists up again. He doesn’t know what Andrew thought happened. There are plenty of possibilities. Neil could have died in the fire. He was never in any danger of that, but Andrew wouldn’t have known hours later on the ground. Neil could have just been burned and taken to the hospital. But Andrew knows enough of Neil’s past to at least consider abduction with a fire set as a distraction. 

Andrew knows enough to believe that Neil could have panicked and left town. 

It’s no wonder that Andrew couldn’t stand to look at him, let alone touch him. 

He probably shouldn’t go sit on top of Andrew. He’d just get shoved off. Instead, he calls Jean. 

“Hello, honey,” Jean says when he answers. 

“Oh, no,” Neil laughs. “No English pet names. It’s too weird.” 

“Pookie?” Jean asks. “Lamb chop?” 

“Did you google these? They’re terrible.” 

“I have more. Darling. Stud. Sugar bear.” 

“Stick to French,” Neil says, amused. “Or you could try translating into English.” 

“My wolf?” Jean says. 

“Yeah,” Neil says. “That will definitely work on someone.” 

“Would it work on Andrew?” 

“No,” Neil answers. “He’d make me sit in the backseat for a month.” 

“I heard you two,” Jean says quietly. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the door was open.” 

“I figured.” 

There’s a moment of silence that doesn’t feel tense. Neil presses the bottom of his phone to his shoulder and waits for Jean to gather his thoughts. He and Andrew hadn’t been talking for very long. They didn’t say anything particularly incriminating. Running. Weight lifting. _Westworld_. 

At the other end of the phone, Jean takes a breath and asks, “Is he always like that?” 

“Like what?” 

“I don’t know,” Jean admits. “Open? Insightful? Affectionate?” 

“Yes,” Neil says. “When he can be.” 

“He seemed so...I don’t know. Today, he said you were staying with him, but it wasn’t—he didn’t seem happy about it. I asked Kevin if you could stay with him and Coach instead and he said yes, but he looked at me like I had asked him something terribly bizarre.” 

Neil weighs his options. This is a good faith effort on Jean’s behalf to understand Andrew. Neil isn’t going to say anything that would betray Andrew’s confidence, but if he has an opportunity to get one more person to see Andrew as something other than a cold, hard monster, he’s going to take it. It’s just a matter of balance. 

He considers carefully and then says, “I left my phone and keys in my apartment when the alarm went off. He came to pick me up for school and he couldn’t find me, at first. I couldn’t text him to tell him what happened and I couldn’t answer when he was looking for me.” 

“He was worried?” Jean asks. 

“I can tell you what happened, but I can’t tell you his feelings.” 

“I think that I was very wrong,” Jean says slowly. “About your Andrew.” 

“Oh,” Neil says for about the fiftieth time that day. “He’s not— not like that.” 

The noise Jean makes is both musical and deeply skeptical. “And you? Is it ‘like that’ for you?” 

There was a time in Neil’s life when he didn’t have these kinds of phone calls. He didn’t have a phone, much less people to call on it. He didn’t have Andrew to talk about. He’d take two out of the three back. But, Jean is asking a real question. _Is_ it ‘like that’ for Neil? Is there something in the pitch of his desire to be around Andrew that makes it romantic instead of friendly? Probably all the kissing and orgasms. Or not. Just because it’s something significant for Neil doesn’t mean that it’s _significant_. 

He decides to answer honestly. “I don’t know. I don’t even really know what ‘that’ means in practice.” 

“I think,” Jean ventures, “the question I’m asking is whether it’s emotional for you or if it’s just physical. Would it make a difference to you if it was him or someone else.” 

Neil’s never been asked a worse question in his life. Of course it matters that it’s Andrew. Does it matter to Andrew that it’s him? He’s inclined to think yes, even if it’s only because Andrew needs a baseline level of trust to touch in the first place. 

“I don’t know,” Neil says again. “I’ll think about it. But if you’re worried we have to break up or something, we don’t.” 

“Don’t we?” Jean asks. 

“A week ago you said that’s what Andrew told you. And now I’m telling you. Seems pretty conclusive.” 

“Of course,” Jean says. “It doesn’t sound at all like either of you are saying that to avoid actually talking about your relationship.” 

“An hour ago you were trying to rescue me from Andrew’s evil clutches and now you’re an expert?” Neil asks. 

“Fair enough,” Jean says cheerfully. “We’ll just see what happens.” 

Neil does not like the sound of that. 

“Jean,” he warns. 

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’ll just be self-satisfied with my insider knowledge.” 

For fuck’s sake. Neil plasters on his most insincere voice and says, “Sorry, I have to hang up now because I want to.” 

“Hey, Neil,” Jean hurries to say. “Should I apologize to Andrew?” 

Absolutely not. Neil can’t imagine anything Andrew would like _less_ than a heart-to-heart with Jean about his true, gentle nature and, apparently, his intimate personal relationship with Neil. He definitely can’t imagine anything Jean would like less than Andrew’s response. 

“Yes,” Neil says. “Definitely. You owe him one.” 

After a quiet moment, Jean asks, “Are you setting me up?” 

“Gotta go,” Neil says, and hits the hang-up button on his phone. 

___

For all the time Nicky spent on the soup, dinner is a quick affair. Neil takes his usual seat—between Nicky and Andrew, across from Aaron so that they can bicker face-to-face—and everyone tucks into the food with single-minded purpose. They manage two bowls each and finish two loaves of crusty bread before Nicky heads out to work at the club. 

Neil stands at the counter with Andrew and obediently loads the dishes Andrew is rinsing into the dishwasher. Without Nicky there to do it, the Minyard-Hemmick dishwasher devolves into chaos. Bread plates are shoved carelessly in around bowls, large plates are slotted between offset prongs, and there’s no rhyme or reason at all to the way they put silverware in. Neil had once opened the dishwasher to find a drinking class right-side-up, overflowing with dirty dishwasher water. So, now he does it. 

He keeps an eye on Aaron, watching as he puts away the leftovers, wipes the table, and brings the placemats over to shake out crumbs. Neil fits the next soup bowl into the top rack and waits until Aaron comes close to speak up, blinking slowly in his best impersonation of innocence. 

“Aaron,” Neil says, “do you—” 

“No, I will not watch _Westworld_ with you, asshole.” 

“You can pick the episode,” Neil offers. 

“That’s the dumbest thing you’ve ever said,” Aaron says. The openly disgusted look he aims at Neil is belied by the tiniest quirk at the corner of his mouth. “And it was a high bar.” 

“So, do you have a problem with robots in general, or….” 

“I have a problem with _you_.” Aaron jabs sharply at Neil’s chest, but keeps one eye on Andrew and his finger short of making impact. “You make things intolerable just by being near them.” 

“Oh?” Neil asks curiously. “Is that why no one likes you?” 

The pink at the tips of Aaron’s ears spreads onto his cheeks when Andrew huffs out a barely audible burst of amusement. Aaron scowls at Andrew, then turns his disapproval back on Neil. “I swear to god, Josten.” 

Neil startles a little when Andrew waves the next bowl in front of his face, but he takes it and arranges it neatly behind the last one. 

Andrew says, “I’m sure Aaron has very important things of his own to do tonight.” 

“Don’t we all,” Aaron answers mockingly. He drops the last of the silverware into the sink with a clatter and heads out, stopping only long enough to lean back around the corner and point sternly from Neil to Andrew. “Keep it down, you two.” 

Vaguely alarmed, Neil says, “Oh.” 

He’s a broken record. 

“You don’t think,” he asks, turning to Andrew. “He doesn’t mean…” 

“He’s not as stupid as he looks.” 

Wait. 

“Wait,” Neil says, delighted. “You know you two are—” 

Andrew cuts him off with a look. “I heard it.” 

Neil balances on the razor edge of Andrew’s censure, torn between the competing desires to mock and to step close and let Andrew wrap him up, soapy hands and all. It hits him in a landslide, the bullshit with Riko, Jean’s misplaced concern, Kevin’s exy anxiety, the fire. All the tension and stress that’s been building inside him effervesces, bubbling into a strange giddiness that he knows is totally inappropriate for the moment. But here, in Andrew’s kitchen, surrounded by generic, budget good-taste cabinets that are interrupted with all the color Nicky could throw at them, Neil feels miles away from his problems. He watches Andrew’s hands move hypnotically under the faucet, turning the large pot to rinse its gently curved sides, scrubbing at the little bits of seasoning that stuck to the bottom of it. 

He stares until Andrew’s voice cuts through the fog with a mild, “Nervous breakdown, Josten?” 

“No,” Neil says, snapping back to attention. “Just thinking.” 

Andrew doesn’t answer, but when he hands over the pot he keeps his hold onto the handles and meets Neil’s eyes. The question is silent, but Neil can read it in the lift of Andrew’s eyebrow. 

“I’m good,” Neil says. “I promise.” 

The pot fits neatly into the space Neil had left for it. Andrew drops a handful of spoons haphazardly into the silverware basket, punctuating the rest of the tidy rows of dishes with a little spot of anarchy. Neil doesn’t fix it. He likes it better this way. 

He doesn’t realize he’s staring at the dishes until Andrew bumps him out of the way and pokes at the buttons to start it. 

“Living room or bedroom?” Andrew asks. 

“Depends,” Neil says thoughtfully. “Am I choosing between the couch and the bed or between the TV and you?” 

Andrew’s eyes roll. Neil grins at him and leans into it when Andrew wipes his wet hands off on Neil’s borrowed shirt and wraps his arms around Neil’s ribs. 

“You,” Neil says. “I pick the answer that comes with more of you.” 

“Sappy,” Andrew scolds. 

“I just like you,” Neil says, shrugging. “Does that lose me bedroom privileges?” 

Andrew glares, but his fingers flex against Neil’s sides, his thumbs dragging over the sensitive skin where Neil’s ribs curve around to his back. His hold tightens, then releases. Neil can still feel the press of Andrew’s hands through the thin fabric of the shirt, tingling more like a promise than a loss. 

“Move, then,” Andrew says. “If you’re so eager.” 

In the dusky light of his bedroom, Andrew locks the door behind them and pushes Neil towards the bed with one hand, the other swiping quickly on his phone screen until his speakers start playing something quivering and plaintive that Neil recognizes as Billie Eilish. Neil sprawls on the bed and watches as Andrew casually plugs his phone into its charger, strips off his armbands, and approaches the bed with something that would look like disinterest if Neil didn’t know how to read the line of Andrew’s jaw and the rhythm of his breath. 

Neil has learned how to make space for Andrew like this. Where his knee needs to go so that Andrew’s leg can slot between his own. How much of an arch his back needs so that they settle together when Andrew rests his weight on him. The way he needs to keep right arm down so Andrew can brace above him and press their foreheads together. 

The mattress dips under Andrew’s knee and Neil watches him, wondering what lessons Andrew has learned about how to fit against Neil. Whatever they are, he does it perfectly, pressing into the space Neil made for him so closely that Neil can feel the texture of Andrew’s shirt through his own. 

“Don’t tell me you want to have a deep talk too?” Neil asks lightly when he realizes Andrew doesn’t intend to stop looking at him any time soon. 

“No,” Andrew says. His voice is very quiet. “I want to suck you off.” 

A wild sort of heat blossoms in Neil, knocking his breath out to make space for itself in his lungs. Neil curses in German, tips his head back, tries to catch Andrew’s mouth in a kiss. 

“Yes or no?” Andrew breathes against his mouth. 

“Yes,” Neil says. The second _yes_ gets trapped in his throat when Andrew finally kisses him. 

Neil is hyper aware of every drag of Andrew’s hands against his skin, of the pressure of Andrew’s thigh between his legs, of the friction intensifying every time one of them tries futilely to get closer. By the time Andrew pulls away and drags his mouth down over Neil’s chin, the line of his throat, the ridge of bunched-up fabric at his collarbones, Neil feels like every inch of him is exposed. Everything is charged with erotic potential: Andrew’s careful hands working at Neil’s waistband; the heat of the palm he presses to Neil’s sternum when it’s done; the way he mumbles against the crease of Neil’s thigh, “One hand. Just my hair.” 

By now, Neil knows it’s more than permission. It’s an expression of desire; not just “you can touch me,” but “touch me.” He weaves his fingers into the mess of Andrew’s curls and forces himself not to twist when Andrew ducks and takes Neil into his mouth, pulling off almost immediately with a wet popping sound. 

“Holy shit, Andrew,” Neil whispers hoarsely. 

Andrew works Neil as easily with his mouth as he does with his hand, except that the wet heat of it is so intense that every nerve in Neil’s body strains towards him. Neil’s blood pounds through his body, the rush of it crashing like waves in his ears—taking over his senses so thoroughly that Neil can’t hear the noises he’s making over it. 

Being with Andrew is like passing into another reality. Neil’s body occupies more space than it does in other worlds. He begins and ends with the buzzing feeling in his skin and the hot ache of Andrew’s hands on him. Everything he has orbits the heat of Andrew’s mouth and the slide of Andrew’s hair through his fingers. A sparking, fizzing heat builds under his skin in sharp spikes of pleasure and he has to look away to have any hope of warning Andrew before Neil comes down his throat. 

“Andrew,” he gasps. “Andrew, I—”. He arches his neck back against Andrew’s pillow, letting Andrew’s scent overwhelm him. 

The only response he gets is a hum, low in Andrew’s throat. The vibration shocks through him and explodes across his nerve endings as he tips over the edge, face pressed into Andrew’s pillow to keep Aaron from hearing the embarrassing noises he can’t stop making as Andrew works him through his orgasm, throat bobbing as he swallows. 

When Neil comes back to himself, Andrew is wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and crawling up Neil’s body. Neil keeps his fingers in Andrew’s hair and leans up to meet him, sealing their lips together. The salty taste of his own cum bursts across his tongue and he whines into Andrew’s mouth, lifting off the pillow in an attempt to get closer. He has yet to find a way that feels like enough. Maybe if he could live inside Andrew’s skin, he would feel settled. 

Andrew shifts his weight, bracing himself with his knees on either side of Neil’s thighs. The movement puts space between their bodies and Neil protests by arching his hips up, seeking contact. He feels the press of Andrew’s cock against his thigh and Andrew says, tight and raw, “Give me your hand.” 

Neil complies instantly. The throaty whispers pouring from the speakers sear into his consciousness as Andrew tangles their fingers together and slides their joined hands down until they disappear under the thick waistband of Andrew’s joggers. 

The husky croon of the music fills the new space between their bodies— _I’m the powder, you’re the fuse_ —sinking in as Neil feels the hot, hard press of Andrew’s cock against his fingers. Neil looks up, following the pale stretch of Andrew’s skin until their eyes meet. Andrew’s eyes are more golden than Neil has ever seen them, pupils dilated into black holes as their fingers twist and slide over slick skin. 

Andrew is in charge, his fingers locked around and slotted through Neil’s. He leads the rhythm, squeezes to adjust the pressure, and guides the smallest twist of their hands. Neil does what Andrew can’t do for himself; he uses the hand in Andrew’s hair to tug his head to the side and kisses Andrew’s neck, tracing a path under his jaw with a breathless, open-mouthed drag of his lips. He hears Andrew swear viciously, feels their fingers tighten, and sucks at the vulnerable pulse point until their fists blur with speed and Andrew spills out over their entwined knuckles. 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean meddles. Riko doesn't enjoy the away game. Andrew has limits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here it is, the final chapter.
> 
> Thank you guys so much for coming on this absurd journey with me. Writing this much from Neil's POV has been an incredibly fun challenge and I hope he has brought you the kind of exasperated delight he brings to me. 
> 
> This is the longest thing I've ever written and it feels like a real fucking accomplishment. Words cannot express the gratitude and appreciation I have for @yeoldetabbe, @lemonicee, @justadreamfox, and @willow_bird for the pep talks, second opinions, and specialist knowledge, without which I would still be withering in a pit of indecision.

_“I heard Neil Josten’s apartment building burned down.”_

_“Yeah, that sounds about right.”_

___

Their mortal enemies to the Northeast, the Vultures, await them at the end of an hour’s ride in the school’s athletic bus. Loading gear and equipment onto it is a well-oiled ordeal that Neil is unlucky enough to be drafted for. By the time Neil follows Jean onto the bus, the front third is full of sophomores and the upperclassmen have claimed their usual spots at the rear, with the other Juniors forming a narrow buffer. There’s an empty seat in front of Kevin for Jean and Neil, but Jean sails right past it, his chin up, his sunglasses holding back the curls that frame his forehead. Neil watches, dumbfounded, as Jean strides confidently to the back and slides in next to Andrew. 

None of the noise ricocheting off the walls dampens, but every one of Neil’s friends’ heads turn to watch. Matt braces a hand against the seat in front of him, ready to move. Renee more discreetly sets her book aside and twists her body towards the aisle. Even Jeremy pops up, his head swiveling towards the potential disaster like one of those fucking meerkats in a nature special. Neil’s just not sure if Jean knows he’s the gazelle. 

The only one of them who seems uninterested is Kevin, who turns immediately back to Neil and waves him forward. “Sit down. We need to talk about their pathetic defense.” 

Neil drops himself onto the bench beside Kevin and asks, “If it’s pathetic, why do we need to talk about it?” 

“Oh, sorry,” Kevin says. “Were you hoping we’d skate through just assuming we're always better?” 

Behind them, Neil hears Jean say, “So, Andrew.” 

Renee’s foot slides its way a little further into the aisle. 

Andrew says nothing. 

Neil can feel the back of the bus holding its collective breath, but Kevin charges right through it. “Their seniors barely know how to hold their sticks, but they’ve got this Junior, McKenna, who’s worth watching.” 

Undaunted, Jean dials up the charm in his voice and tries again. “I don’t think we’ve ever really talked.” 

“It was my favorite thing about you,” Andrew says, bored. “Now you’ve ruined it.” 

Kevin says, “She hasn’t been playing long, but Dad has some tape of her first game.” 

Neil tries desperately to tune Kevin out, to turn the eager recitation of stats into white noise so that he can hear what’s happening in the seat behind them. What he catches is the end of Jean’s new approach: “so we should get to know each other better. For Neil.” 

From across the aisle, Neil hears a stifled, gleeful giggle. Allison. 

“This is my fault,” Neil whispers to Kevin. He’d told Jean to apologize to Andrew because he couldn’t help himself, but he didn’t mean like _this_ ,in front of all these people, where Andrew can’t escape. 

“What?” Kevin asks. “You’ll be able to get past her. You just need to pay more attention to her left.” 

“For Neil?” Andrew echoes quietly. 

“Yes,” Jean says. Neil can hear the blinding wattage of his smile in the word. “We’re coming up on two months together, and I feel like you and I hardly know each other. Not your fault, of course. It’s the boyfriend’s job to get to know his beloved’s friends.” 

Neil hears someone whisper _“beloved”_ with hushed awe. 

“Are you listening to me?” Kevin asks. “Being a Junior doesn’t mean you can afford to be indifferent to scouts.” 

“Kevin,” Allison calls sweetly. “Kindly shut the fuck up.” 

Kevin scowls and crosses his arms over his chest, slouching down in his seat. Neil feels bad, he really does. On any other bus ride, he’d be more than happy to sit with Kevin and fill the entire hour with conversation about the minute details of their opponents' techniques. Today, though, he’s waiting with bated breath to see if the scene behind them turns violent. The silence left behind by Kevin’s chatter should mean that Andrew’s next words will be audible to everyone, Renee speaks up first. . 

“Hey, Calla?” she calls to one of the other juniors towards the middle of the seats. “Can you turn that music up?” 

Something Neil has been told is the Jonas Brothers pumps a little louder through the bus. It might be enough to block the sound for people beyond their immediate grouping, but Neil can still hear Andrew’s monotone correction, “Six weeks.” 

“Give or take,” Jean answers blithely. “So, what do you say?” 

“You have ten seconds to get out of this seat before I sharpen my knife on you.” 

Jean, incredibly, unbelievably, recklessly, laughs. It’s loud and bright and eclipses the crooning coming from Calla’s phone speaker. Neil braces for impact. “I know better now,” Jean says, sounding for all the world like a man confident in his warm reception. “You wouldn’t hurt me.” 

“I wouldn’t hurt some people,” Andrew corrects flatly. “You, I’d happily stab.” 

Before Jean can do something stupid, like continue to pester Andrew, Jeremy half-stands and leans against the back of his seat. “Jean,” he calls. “I have to show you this video of lobsters playing the piano.” 

“Lobsters?” Jean says, directing the question at Andrew. Is he—is he asking if Andrew wants to go with him to see the video? No one can ever call Jean a coward again. 

Andrew’s response must come in the form of an unamused (or worse) glare, because Jean waits only a beat or two before standing. “We can talk more later,” Jean says, and then he’s out of the bench seat. Neil thinks he might even hear _whistling_. 

Jean walks briskly, even with the movement of the bus, but Neil manages to snag his sleeve before he gets too far. “ _What are you doing?_ ” Neil hisses in French. 

Jean’s answering smile is as brilliantly smug as it had sounded during that entire conversation. “ _Research_.” 

The despair and awe Neil feels at that answer are entwined. Inseparable. Neil admires the nerve even as he hopes Jean calls off whatever insane pester-Andrew-into-transparency plan he seems to have. It’s ballsy, but it could and likely will put Jean on the list of people over whose flaming bodies Andrew would make popcorn. 

There’s nothing concerned in Jean’s body language as he walks, swaying with the gentle rocking of tires on the road, and eases into the seat beside Jeremy. Jean ducks his head so that only the frames of his sunglasses are visible, but beyond him, Neil sees Riko; he’s turned in his seat, watching the scene with cold, calculating eyes. 

Neil had completely forgotten about him. It’s not that he thinks of Riko often, but the oversight makes him uneasy, because from the look on Riko’s face, it’s evident that he hadn’t forgotten about _them_ at all. 

___

No one approaches Andrew for the rest of the bus ride. Neil is prepared to tackle anyone who tries, but the opportunity doesn’t present itself. He spends the time coaxing Kevin out of his sulk with an in-depth conversation about other sports that would improve exy skills. Hockey and lacrosse are out, of course, but Neil makes what he thinks is a pretty solid argument for snowboarding. Kevin suggests fencing and looks pityingly at Neil when he asks if that’s a sword Kevin is willing to die on. 

They broach tennis for the goalies exactly once and drop it when Andrew kicks the back of their seat viciously. 

The Vulture’s gym is black and red and obviously very proud of the knobby, clawed foot motif that’s stamped on way too many of their walls and floors. It’s the Foxes’ first away game of the season, so everyone is bristling with energy and the high of invading someone else’s territory, victory already a phantom taste on their tongues. Unloading the bus, changing, gearing up—it all moves a lot faster than it does when they’re on their home turf. Add that to the fact that it’s the night before Halloween and, well. Tensions are high in the best ways—and some of the worst. 

Jean strides over and wedges himself in between Andrew and Neil at the bench they’ve chosen, nearly knocking Neil’s bag off when he drops his own. “This will be a good game,” he declares. 

Andrew’s eyebrow lifts. 

“Stop,” Neil says to Jean. “You’re going to—” _make Andrew want to prove you wrong_. “Jinx it.” 

“Look at Kevin,” Jean says brightly. “Does that look like a man who’s willing to lose tonight?” 

“It’s a team effort,” Kevin calls from a few benches down. “Or, it should be. I can’t carry all of you.” 

“Carry us? That’s quite a claim,” Riko says. The words are light, but the smile on his face is cold and a little too toothy. 

“Speaking of ‘ _us’_ ,” Kevin says, turning to face Riko. “Have you been meditating on that teamwork we talked about?” 

A cowardly _ooooooooh_ creeps its way out of one of the further corners of the locker room. The longer the _o_ stretches, the brighter the spots of color on Riko’s cheeks become. Neil could step in—maybe should step in—but Kevin’s defiance is oddly thrilling. 

“Yes, well. It’s difficult to play with a _team_ when they can’t keep up with you,” Riko says shortly. 

Kevin’s smile befits the cover of a magazine. It’s so wide and pageant-ready that it presses a rare half-dimple into Kevin’s cheek. He calls out, “Hear that, everyone? Let’s all give Riko the support he needs tonight.” 

The twin spots on Riko’s cheekbones burn like torches. 

“Neil,” Kevin says, turning back to face him. “I’m counting on your speed.” 

Because Neil lives happily in the middle of a sports movie, Jean slings an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in so that Neil’s head knocks against his chest piece. The fresh laundry smell of Jean’s uniform mostly covers the sweat that you can’t seem to ever fully clean off the gear. 

“That’s our boy,” Jean says. “And with Andrew backing us up, how can we lose?” 

That reckless boldness is enough that Neil reluctantly pulls his attention away from the savage gleam in Riko’s eyes and ducks around Jean to see how Andrew is reacting to this praise. Unsurprisingly, he’s not. Reacting. 

“Andrew,” Neil says. All he gets is a flick of the eyes towards him, but that’s good enough. He switches to German and says, “ _Are you going to throw it to spite him?_ ” 

“Nein,” Andrew says dismissively. And then, “ _Maybe_.” 

“ _You know the stakes. Happy Kevin drinks, angry Kevin lectures.”_

The decisive lift of Andrew’s middle finger is a positive sign. Neil chooses to translate it as Andrew acknowledging the consequences of his actions. 

The last moments in the locker room mark conversation’s lowest tide. Any words are murmured, washed over by the sounds of lockers opening and closing, zippers sliding, and the thuds of shoes and equipment being tossed against the thin metal. 

By the time Neil takes his first step into the Vultures’ gym, the whole team is vibrating with anticipation. Something about Kevin’s dismissive take-down of Riko seems to have energized the younger players, Neil included, and the promise of a second win in a row is intoxicating. 

Wymack starts Kevin and Seth as strikers, with Renee on goal and Jean and Aaron as backliners. It leaves Andrew, Riko, and Neil to watch from the sidelines. Neil paces as close to the Vultures’ goal as he can, watching their goalie’s moves, watching their backliners try to counter Seth’s brute force and Kevin’s ambitious, carefully planned shots. When he retreats to their bench, he finds that Riko has made his way to its far end, the maximum distance from Andrew. Riko’s jaw is set, his expression a little too tight to be calm. Neil doesn’t like the look of that. 

“Did something happen?” he asks Andrew. 

When Andrew just shrugs, Neil turns his attention back to the game and asks, “Will they be able to score on you?” 

“You can’t,” Andrew says. 

“Ouch,” Neil says lightly. 

“But you think they could?” 

Neil turns back to the court, this time watching the strikers try to work Renee’s weak spots. Number 18 has a lot of fancy footwork, but his shots seem to always triangulate through a spot above Renee’s right shoulder. The other, 8, takes whatever opening he can find, throwing the balls hard, if not quite fast enough. 

“No,” Neil says. “Not unless you let them.” 

At the end of the first half, they’re ahead 3-1 and Kevin stalks through the court door like he’s Zeus descending from Mount Olympus, the entire world held in the ball he’d expertly, almost lovingly snuck through the crook of the goalie’s arm. 

Neil offers a high-five, electrified as much by Kevin’s haughty return as he is by the disgruntled looks coming from across the court. Kevin hits his hand so hard it stings, but grips Neil’s and holds on instead of letting it rebound. The two layers of gloves between them are bulky; their fingers can only interlock to the first knuckle, but Neil feels the energy Kevin is trying to transfer to him anyway. It plucks at his bones until his entire body is humming in tune. 

“They’re putting on McKenna. Number 5. Remember, she’s left handed. Watch for those swings in your blind spots. Their goalie—” 

“Sucks at underhand, I saw.” 

Kevin’s answering smile is feral. “Don’t hold back for Riko’s sake. If you can do it faster and better, do it.” 

Neil’s usual playing-with-Riko strategy is to keep to his side of the court and not expect Riko to send him the ball unless there is literally no other choice. He keeps an eye on the ball as a matter of course, but, unlike with Kevin and Seth, doesn’t try to move in such a way that he could be easily passed to. Even though Riko tends to ignore him, there’s no question that Riko’s arrogance doesn’t preclude his constant awareness of where everyone on the court is located. He whistles when he wants Neil to pass the ball, warns him off of things he wants for himself, and swoops in to get control of the ball if he thinks (incorrectly) that Neil can’t possibly make it there in time. 

Neil would do the usual tonight, except that Kevin’s uncharacteristic ‘ _off with his head’_ attitude has Neil buzzing with adrenaline. Add in the challenge of the new Vulture backliner, and Neil’s feet barely touch the ground as he flies around the court, ducking blocks and leaving McKenna spinning to chase after him. He ignores most of Riko’s whistles, too, passing the ball only when the flow of the game recommends it. 

Neil scores, and then Riko scores, and then the ball arcs through the air at the midpoint between them. Riko is closer, but slower; even though Neil has to cover fifteen more feet than Riko does, he knows he’s the only one who will get to it before it hits the ground. So, he runs. He runs hard, ducking the Vultures’ attempts to block him, and scoops the ball into his net before it can hit the ground, low enough that all he has to do is keep the swing of his shoulder straight and the ball arcs up again. 

Before he can see if it gets past the goalie, a freight train hits him. Neil knows he’s going down, so he adjusts for the fall—what he can’t adjust for is the vicious lance of wood against his stomach. It catches on a knot of newer scar tissue, lighting it up with pain, and knocks all of the wind out of him. It hurts too much for him to brace. Hurts too much to be a dull object. Hurts like it did when he got stabbed the first time. 

The floor rises up to meet him and he hits it hard, knocking a dull ache through his bones and into his teeth; he barely notices it because he can’t, _can’t_ take a breath. His throat seizes. Everything in his chest and stomach grows claws so that each breath he tries to take feels like it’s ripping him apart from the inside. 

He panics. 

The racquet clatters from his hands as he curls into the fetal position and tries to rip off his helmet. All he can think is _danger_ and _air_ and _this is it_. His hands fumble with the straps at his chin and he gets it off, purely by luck, sending it spinning across the court floor so he can search for his racquet again to arm himself. 

Someone touches him, grabs him, and Neil reacts. He kicks out blindly, his vision blurred by the involuntary tears leaking from his eyes. The hands grab again, fingertips bending the skin of Neil’s arms. He hears his name, a worried, admonishing, “ _Neil_ ,” but he doesn’t recognize the voice. 

He does recognize the sharp, “Move,” that follows it. The grabbing hands disappear and then he’s being lifted, pulled up and onto his knees by his chest plate. He tries to stumble to his feet, but a hand wraps around the back of his neck and keeps him down. Like a cat, he thinks. Like he’s a kitten. The idea of it sends an inappropriate jolt of amusement through him. 

The next, “Neil,” is close, in Andrew’s calm, steady, familiar voice. The hand gripping his gear keeps him from falling forward; the one on his neck stops him from falling back. As impossible as it seems, he is held up. 

And Andrew is there. Neil tries to say his name, but chokes on the first syllable. He can’t hear much through the rush in his ears. All he can see are blurry shapes, dark edges, and bright spots. 

“You’re fine,” Andrew says. “Calm down.” 

Neil gropes for something to hold onto. He lands on Andrew’s jersey; he grabs a handful and tries to focus on the texture of it, on the tight grip of Andrew’s hand on his neck. He drags in a harsh half-breath and then another, his chest heaving. 

Somewhere, a woman’s quiet voice says something. Andrew says, “Not yet,” and pulls Neil a little closer; his knees slip over the smooth court floor and bump against Andrew’s. 

Neil finally pulls in a whole breath. The air is dense and overheated and smells like sweat and aggression, but it’s the sweetest thing he’s ever tasted. He exhales hard and sucks in another, slumping forward in relief. Andrew aims Neil’s head towards his shoulder and lets him rest there, breathing in the still-clean scent of Andrew’s uniform. 

“Riko took you down,” Andrew says against his ear. “He didn’t stop.” 

“His racquet,” Neil says. He presses his fingers to the tender spot beneath his ribs. Andrew reaches and nudges Neil’s hand out of the way, replacing Neil’s fingers with his own. Neil knows he must be referencing his mental map of Neil’s scars. This one is messy and gnarled and still pink. It throbs with the phantom pain of the knife that made it. 

From above them somewhere, Abby gently says, “Andrew.” 

“Ready?” Andrew asks. 

When Neil nods, Andrew shoves him off and stands, hauling Neil onto his feet too. Up, with his vision cleared, he sees his team clustered around looking worried and angry. Kevin is close, scowling, with his racquet braced against Riko’s chest to keep him back. 

“So sorry,” Riko says. “I just couldn’t stop in time.” 

Neil leaves Riko to the dangerous look in Kevin’s eyes and blinks at the little cluster of players around them. Jean is posted behind Andrew, his hands tucked away, his face guilty and worried. It must have Jean that Neil kicked at earlier. Jean whose well-intentioned hands sent Neil deeper into a spiral. 

“Let’s get you checked out,” Abby says. 

“I can play,” Neil protests. “He just knocked the wind out of me.” 

Abby smiles. “I’m sure you can. Come drink some water.” 

He drinks the water and sits out the rest of the half. His only consolation is that Riko is out, too, sulking at the other end of the bench in a deep freeze. It’s infuriating being out after playing no more than a quarter. If Neil’s being honest, though, the bench is where he should be right now. It takes the whole of Abby’s exam (and then some) before breathing doesn’t feel like rolling through broken glass. 

And anyway, they win. The final score is 8-3. Maybe Riko’s bullshit lit a fire under the team, maybe the Vultures were freaked out by Neil’s panic attack, or maybe the two teams aren’t really in the same league. 

Whatever the reason, they win, so the stakes of Riko’s bullshit stay low. Neil is fine. Andrew shuts down the goal. They come out ahead. 

Afterwards, Neil heads to the less populated girls’ locker room the way he usually does. They have a rough, mostly unspoken routine worked out: the girls shower and change fast; Neil showers and changes even faster. The space is empty when he steps out of the showers, so he wastes no time in pulling on his postgame sweats over his hastily toweled legs and shoving his feet into his crocs. He’s just tugged his hoodie down over his stomach when he hears the door creak open and Riko steps into view. 

Which is. Well. Weird. What the fuck. 

“What do you want?” Neil asks bluntly. 

“To apologize, of course.” 

“Try again,” Neil says. “Neither one of us believes that.” 

Riko shows Neil his teeth. It’s not charming, but Neil is too tired of Riko’s shit to be worried about what it means. Smoothly, Riko says, “You wound me.” 

All at once, Neil has had enough. He’s been bumping up against enough for a while, but he’s already developing a bruise on his stomach and he had to sit out most of the game and generally, he’s just over it. “Listen,” Neil says impatiently. “Whatever your fucking problem is, just say it and get it over with. Is this about Jean? Are you pissed that I ‘took’ Jean from you or whatever?” 

“I’d say you’ve taken more than that.” 

Ludicrous, Neil thinks. “This is your chance,” he says. “I’m listening. But I’m not interested in your weird, cryptic movie villain thing, so if you’re not going to say anything, just get out of the way. 

“No,” Riko spits, straightening out of his unconvincing lean against the lockers. “You don’t tell me what to do. You think you’re such hot shit, but you’re nothing. You’re just a distraction. An empty, shiny thing that everyone will get sick of looking at. You’re not even good at Exy, you’re just fast.” 

“Then why do you _care_?” Neil asks. “If you’re better than me, go be better than me and leave the rest of us alone.” 

“The rest of us?” Riko laughs coldly. “You show up out of nowhere and you think there’s an _us_ and that it _includes you_? You think everyone feeling sorry for a stray means anything? You think all of this attention is going to last? It’s desperate. They’re going to realize you have nothing to offer them.” 

Neil hears _you’re nothing_ and _you have to be forgettable_ and _you don’t get to have friends, Abram_. He’s under the spray of the shower again and this time it’s ice cold, snaking into his veins and cracking him apart as it freezes. Is any of that true? Maybe? There’s a part of him that latches on and whispers at him about his worthlessness, but on the other hand...Riko is saying it, so it can’t be true. Neil tries to imagine any of his friends being here, hearing this, and then his brain finally catches hold on something: attention. Riko, saying ‘all of this attention.’ 

“Shit,” Neil says, understanding breaking sharply through his instinctive retreat. “Attention.” 

“Excuse me?” 

“You’re jealous.” 

“Of you?” Riko scoffs. “Hardly.” 

“Not of me-me,” Neil says dismissively. “Of the attention. You think I have too much of it.” 

“You do. You don’t deserve any of it.” 

“But that’s not the point, is it? You think that if they weren’t giving it to me, they’d be giving it to you instead.” 

Riko’s answering glare is silent, but it tells Neil everything he needs to know. 

“Jean picked me,” Neil says slowly. “Kevin picked me. No one picked you because you’re an asshole.” 

“You’re a novelty. They’ll get bored.” 

“Wow,” Neil says. “This is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

“Fuck you,” Riko snaps. 

“It’s pathetic,” Neil says matter-of-factly. “You try to cultivate this reputation, this evil mastermind thing or whatever, but it’s bullshit. There’s nothing to you. No amount of attention is going to make you a real boy.” 

Riko takes a step forward, his eyes narrowing. He says, “You watch your mouth.” 

“Fuck off already,” Neil retorts. He tosses his towel towards the hamper and scoops his bag up and onto his shoulder. “If you need to make me your nemesis to fill that void inside you, go for it. Just don’t expect me to play along. I have better things to do.” 

“I can ruin you,” Riko warns. 

“Sure,” Neil says. “If it makes you feel special, have fun with that.” 

He has to walk right by Riko to get to the door, which he thinks should probably put him on some kind of edge. Riko is vibrating with anger, overloaded, his teeth clenched, his face red. But Neil doesn’t give him the satisfaction of skirting around him cautiously—he just walks. There’s nothing Riko can do to him that hasn’t been done before. And Riko doesn’t have the balls to do it, anyway. He’s the kind of cruel that has to hide away in the shadows. 

Neil pushes through the door and almost runs into Andrew, who steps back just in time to avoid getting hit in the face. His goalie reflexes are all that save him from a broken nose. 

“Hi,” Neil says, smiling. Whatever Riko had tethered himself to inside Neil’s mind has slipped the knot; Neil lets him fall down and away easily. “Were you coming to check on me?” 

“We can’t leave without you,” Andrew says. “Coach said no.” 

“I got held up,” Neil says lightly. He pushes the door further open and steps through it, shifting sideways so that Andrew can see Riko still furiously hunched by the lockers. 

Andrew looks from Riko to Neil, scanning him quickly. A question trembles through his expression then falls, crushed beneath the press of Andrew’s ready anger. It’s just that Riko isn’t worth it. He’s not worth the air it would take to insult him, the bruises to the knuckles to hit him, or the raised heart rate to yell at him. Neil cups his hand loosely over Andrew’s shoulder to stop him from stepping through the door. 

“Don’t bother,” Neil says. “What are you going to buy me for dinner?” 

“You played for fifteen minutes,” Andrew says, his eyes still on Riko. “Why do you think you deserve dinner?” 

Neil spends the walk through the gym and to the bus trying to annoy the dark look out of Andrew’s eyes. It works, mostly, though Andrew still turns on him expectantly after he slides in after Neil on the back bench of the bus. 

“It’s not even worth talking about,” Neil says. “Honestly.” 

Riko is the last to board. Neil doesn’t know where he ends up sitting, because Neil doesn’t care enough to watch. He’s much more interested in slouching against Andrew, fitting an earbud into his ear, and letting Andrew shush him every time he tries to talk over the music. 

___

Neil’s apartment is thankfully off the table for the Halloween party. This is a small gathering of friends only, but he’s still a little traumatized by the loud, oppressive crowd of the last one. 

After a lengthy and savage group chat argument about whether or not they’re all too old to go trick-or-treating, Allison had announced that she was having a Halloween movie marathon at her house, and that the dress code would be ‘costumes, but barely.’ 

Which is how Neil comes to find himself standing in front of Andrew’s bedroom mirror in jeans and a baseball jersey. 

“I hate baseball,” he complains. 

“Yes.” 

“You know I won’t keep this on all night, don’t you?” 

“Oh, no,” Andrew says mildly. “What a shame.” 

Neil makes a face at himself in the mirror, then gives up and resigns himself to an evening in this unholy garment. He says, “I’ll wear it. But you have to back me up on Kevin’s costume.” 

“I won’t need to. He’ll be into it.” 

Andrew is right. Kevin is into it—he glides from his front door to the Kia with his head high and his giraffe onesie zipped only halfway up his chest, revealing the thin texture of his undershirt. What might be baggy on other people fits snugly on Kevin’s tall, lean frame. He has to take the hood down to fit himself into the back seat of the car. Neil is so pleased with himself he thinks he might bite through his lower lip in his efforts not to grin too smugly. 

“You look ridiculous,” Andrew says. 

“Fuck you, I look great,” Kevin counters. “Here’s yours.” 

He hands over a small paper bag, from which Andrew pulls a headband embedded with thin wires that support a white ring of feathers. 

“A halo?” Neil asks, delighted. 

“He’s got the hair for it,” Kevin says. He reaches through the two front seats at tugs at a wayward lock of Andrew’s hair, snatching his hand back quickly when Andrew moves to slap at it. 

Neil knows Andrew won’t protest. He knows that, despite the scowl on Andrew’s face, he’s amused by Kevin’s self-satisfied glee. Andrew tosses the empty bag in Neil’s direction and flips the rearview mirror towards himself, ducking and angling his head until he has the headband on and halo fluffed according to his specifications. One of the feathers droops low enough to tease at one of Andrew’s tousled waves. Neil’s fingertips buzz with the desire to smooth one away from the other. 

“No one will recognize you,” Neil says, faking admiration. When Andrew raises his middle finger right in front of Neil’s nose, he grasps it, grinning when Andrew, instead of pulling away, twists his hand and curls their fingers together. 

Jean awaits them on his corner, posing in his American flag t-shirt, sweatpants, and socks with slides costume. It makes Neil laugh and Kevin grumble about how long it’s been since the French won the Olympic game. Neil thinks he should probably swap with Kevin and sit in the backseat with his boyfriend, but Andrew’s pinky is still hooked around Neil’s on the gearshift and there are pretty few scenarios in which Neil would give that up. 

The mood in the car is light as they wind their way through the residential streets. Andrew drives as carefully as Neil’s ever seen, stopping often to let small children in store-bought costumes to run recklessly across the street. It’s toeing the line between late afternoon and evening when they pull up to Allison’s sharp-angled, contemporary house; she meets them at her front door in leggings and a t-shirt with a giant dick painted on it. 

“Um,” Neil says. “Are you Kevin?” 

“Big dick energy,” Andrew says drily. 

Grinning, Allison taps at what Neil belatedly realizes is a power outlet drawn into the dick just above her right boob. 

“So, yes,” Kevin sniffs. 

“There’s too much there to unpack,” Allison laughs. “Come in. Matt’s making fancy mocktails. Seth is doing a whole thing. Jean and Jeremy are going to have to sit next to each other all night. You’ll see.” 

The expansive entry is quiet other than the echoes of laughter coming from deeper in the house. Neil follows her past any number of expensive modern art pieces with their own lighting and through a large, airy formal living room before they make their way into a section of the house that’s more casual. A _little_ more casual. Seth pops out of what looks like a laundry room as Allison leads them through the halls. His legs are bare beneath his trench coat. Neil thinks _flasher_ , and then Seth stage-whispers, “Hey, little boys,” and tugs the tie around his waist open. When the coat parts, there are several flasks and at least a dozen assorted shot glasses stuffed into his pockets. 

_Flasker_ , Neil mentally corrects. 

“Which one is vodka?” Kevin asks. 

They leave Kevin and Seth pretending they’re doing some kind of illicit drug deal, and follow Allison into a room with an enormous sectional occupying two walls and an even more enormous TV taking up a third. 

The room is dim, just a faint glow coming from the ceiling and the flickering of dozens of flameless candles dotted around. A cheer goes up when they enter. It’s a joyful, welcoming sound, so new to Neil that he feels the urge to step back from it, keep it contained in its original packaging and preserve it. He lingers at the threshold until Andrew’s fingers whisper against his back, nudging him forward. 

Once they’ve waved hello, the flurry of smaller conversations picks up again. Laila and Sara—in a rainbow shirt and sparkly gold shirt respectively—turn back to Katelyn, Aaron, and Marissa, deep in some sort of debate that requires a lot of wild gesticulation. Neil still has no idea what Aaron said to Andrew to get him to agree to the twins arriving separately and, frankly, he has no intention of asking. Further down the sofa, Jeremy stands, his face glowing with delight—Neil clocks the striped shirt, beret, and baguette in his hand, and gets it. Jeremy and Jean have unintentionally dressed up as each other. 

Andrew murmurs, “Subtle,” close enough to Neil’s ear that the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Neil wants to know what he means, but Andrew keeps them walking, stepping over a blanketed form on the ground and leading them towards the snacks. 

“Neil!” Matt calls as they approach. “Caramel apple cider?” 

The drink is tangy and smooth. Neil leaves Andrew to Matt’s enthusiastic mixology demonstration and works his way through the clusters of his friends, accepting their sympathies on the disturbing horror of his costume. He is pulled around the room by the tide, moving in and around and with the others until he finds himself wedged onto the sectional between Jean and Allison. The sofa is deep, a soft, cushiony microfiber that resists Neil’s jeans just a little as he scoots as far to the back as he can. One his right, Allison pokes at the remote. On his left, Jean lifts both arms above his head, making room for Neil—and Jeremy, on the other side—to nestle in under them. 

At the other end of the couch Matt says, with a tilt of his bottle towards Jean, “You’re in two different couples costumes.” 

Neil looks down at himself, then to Jean and Jeremy beyond him. America and baseball. America and France. 

“I am America,” Jean says grandly. “Of course I want more than my share.” 

Half of the individually-wrapped candies aimed at Jean end up in Neil’s lap, battering him like hail. He only barely manages to catch the full-sized chocolate bar Kevin sends flying at his face before it hits him; he flips it quickly between his fingers so he can snap it towards Andrew instead. 

“Stop showing off,” Allison says. “We drew names earlier for movie-picking order, and Aaron, you’re up.” 

The next volley of ammunition hits Aaron and Katelyn after he says, “ _Zombieland_.” 

Neil raises his voice over the groans. “Well _I_ think it’s a great choice, Aaron. Good job.” 

“Yeah, go fuck yourself, asshole,” Aaron calls back. “And the rest of you can suck my dick. This movie is great.” 

“ _So_ great,” Neil agrees. “Robbed at the Oscars.” 

“Stop helping,” Aaron says, narrowing his eyes threateningly. “I swear, Josten, I will hurt you.” 

“But will you?” Matt muses. “Or are you too afraid of Andrew?” 

Aaron grimaces exaggeratedly. “Fine. I’ll shave his head.” 

“But _will you_?” Matt asks again. “Or are you too afraid of—” 

“Oh my god,” Allison says loudly. “Boys, shut up so we can make fun of Aaron’s stupid movie.” 

The movie is actually very good. The fact that he can praise it _and_ irritate Aaron with his praise at the same time makes Neil so happy that his joy bubbles dangerously in his chest. At some point, Allison pulls his legs on top of hers. Neil’s spine lines up neatly against Jean’s ribs, and Renee throws a blanket over all four of them when Allison whines for one. Andrew occupies a space at the edges of Neil’s vision, pulling his attention with every tiny movement. 

They catch eyes again and again. The weight of Andrew’s gaze is heavier than that of Jean’s arm. It seeps into Neil’s skin, gathering into a dense mass at his core that thickens his blood. 

Neil is flushed with something more than the radiating warmth of Jean’s body or the shared heat he and Allison are sheltering beneath the blanket. By the time the credits on the movie roll, Neil’s fingertips are buzzing. He’s claustrophobic in his own skin. 

He thinks he may need Andrew the way Andrew needs cigarettes. 

The buzzing turns to itching, so Neil lifts his legs out of Allison’s lap, slides out from under Jean’s arm, and picks his way over everyone’s legs, heading out the door as the others get up for bathroom breaks and refills. 

He dimly remembers a loft area upstairs, so he aims himself in that direction. The large, plate glass windows reveal the vivid lavenders of the sunset, which fade into the deeper plums and eggplants and creep to the other side of the world as night falls. He jogs up the aggressively modern stairs and steps into the conversational nook off the landing, choosing a curvy leather chaise with a view over the garden for a seat. 

Andrew will follow him, or he won’t. Either way, Neil needs a minute to corral the wild happiness that resists his efforts to compartmentalize it. It’s getting too big for him to hold in. He’s not sure what he’ll do if he loses control of it. 

The only thing that gives Andrew’s approach away is the slightest squeak of his heel as he transitions from the marble landing to the carpeted area of the lounge. Neil tips his head back over the edge of the chaise and watches Andrew approach sideways. 

“Those boots are designed to be loud. It’s in the name,” Neil observes. 

“And yet you got snuck up on,” Andrew says mildly. 

Neil thinks about sitting up, making room for Andrew, or moving to the couch, but before he can do any of those things, Andrew is swinging his leg over the chaise and settling into Neil’s lap. 

“Hi,” Neil says quietly. 

“You’ve been eye-fucking me for an hour.” 

“Yeah,” Neil agrees. He holds his hands up, palms a breath from Andrew’s chest, until Andrew leans into them, pressing close enough for Neil to kiss him. 

It’s hushed and drowsy, paced to match the slow shift of shadows around them as the sun slips fully beneath the horizon. Neil kisses Andrew’s chin, the corner of his mouth, and lets his hands skim the harp slope of Andrew’s lats. He traces the planes of Andrew’s back, hands wandering high enough that Neil can curve his fingers over Andrew’s shoulders and press them into the hollow space above his collarbones. Andrew shivers when Neil’s pinky brushes his pulse point. Being able to move Andrew like this, to make him react, is the headiest thing. The tiniest shiver, the hard bob of his adam’s apple, the needy grip of his fingers in Neil’s hair, it’s all dizzyingly potent. 

Neil kisses under Andrew’s ear, bites lightly at the line of his jaw, and kisses him again. Into the scant space between their mouths, Neil mumbles, “Were you ever going to tell me?” 

“Tell you what?” Andrew whispers back. 

“That this was an option.” 

“This?” Andrew asks, drawing back a little. 

“You and me. The—the physical part.” 

Andrew sits fully upright. Neil tries to chase him for another kiss, but Andrew leans back and plants a hand against Neil’s chest to hold him in place. 

“No, I wasn’t,” Andrew says. He keeps his arm braced and locked so that Neil gets nowhere when he tries to lean closer again. 

The unexpected seriousness in Andrew’s tone draws Neil out of the haze of touching. He tries to run through his mental catalogue for possible meanings of that statement, but he comes up with so many options he might as well have none: Andrew wouldn’t have told him because he didn’t really want to do it in the first place; Andrew wouldn’t tell him him because he thought it would make things weird; Andrew wouldn’t tell him because knew it would go bad; Andrew wouldn’t tell him because he didn’t want Neil to feel pressured; Andrew wouldn’t tell him because he thought it was Neil’s job to figure it out for himself. Neil can usually read Andrew pretty fucking well, but not when it comes to this stuff. 

Does it mean Andrew doesn’t care if they’re doing this? Neil can’t fit that theory between them, actually. There’s no space for it. 

But he wants an answer badly enough that he asks, “Why?” 

“You weren’t interested. It was a non-issue.” 

Neil frowns. “But when I realized it was something we could do, I was interested.” 

“You don’t invite someone who doesn’t swing to the playground,” Andrew says blandly. 

“There are things other than swings at the playground.” 

“Not the literal playground, idiot.” 

“Yeah but I never really got to go to a metaphorical playground that had swings.” 

“Stop saying the word playground,” Andrew orders. 

Andrew’s braced arm is still keeping them apart. Neil settles in for an extended not-making-out period. He shouldn’t have poked this hornet’s nest, but he didn’t expect a serious answer. He should have. 

Neil drops his hands from Andrew’s sides and loops them low around Andrew’s hips instead, his fingers loosely tangled to keep his arms in place. He admits, “I don’t understand.” 

“You are—” Andrew starts, then stops, frowning, and rubs at his jaw. “Important to me. Not because of sex. You are unfairly hot and this—this is good. But I didn’t need it to happen. I didn’t need it to be an eventuality. Our...dynamic was not incomplete without it.” 

Andrew looks very serious in the slants of light let in through the windows. The stupid halo is still on. Andrew is backlit—Neil can see the delicate, ragged edges of the feathers but Andrew’s eyelashes are cast into shadow. Does Andrew allow anyone else this close to him? Close enough to see the suggestion of freckles on his cheeks. Close enough to see the flecks of brighter gold in the amber of his eyes. 

Is it proximity that allows Neil to see Andrew’s many complexities? Whatever it is, Neil thinks he can parse most of the stilted explanation that Andrew gave. It’s about pressure and boundaries, about Andrew’s faultless respect for Neil’s, about how confusing Neil himself must have been. Hindsight has given Neil a different view of the way he’s always gravitated to Andrew, always tried to put himself into the closest orbit Andrew would allow. The thrill of riding behind Andrew on the motorcycle having been less about the speed of the bike than about Neil’s racing heart pounding its rhythm against Andrew’s back. His protectiveness has always been more about the instinct to bite and claw at anything that threatens something so precious to him than it was rational defense. 

Neil thinks about all the things Jean has told him about love and relationships and realizes how much more complicated than he’d realized his feelings had been. More than he’d realized they could be. He thinks about how his wild desire for Andrew ran through deeper layers than he’d known he had. About the delicacy of the ways they’d first touched each other, starting with the tentative brushes of fingers ready to be burned. 

Before he can figure out how to say any of that, before he comes up with even a first word, the sound of yelling elsewhere explodes loudly enough that the pattern of it reaches the loft. 

“Ignore that,” Neil says. 

Andrew raises an eyebrow but doesn’t stir, and Neil has hope that this can be a story they hear later, when they’re done talking. But then the shape of the yelling clarifies itself into his name and he reluctantly climbs off the chaise after Andrew. It just gets louder as they walk quickly back through the house, finally coalescing when they get to the kitchen and find Allison planted in front of Jean and Jeremy, scowling. 

“He is _in the same house_ ,” Allison says angrily. “It would be shitty anyway, but this is next level.” 

“Allison,” Jean says, his voice a little too loud to be calm. “It’s not what you think.” 

“It’s not you and Jeremy making out at a party you’re at _with your boyfriend_?” 

“Oh, shit,” Neil blurts out. Everyone turns to face him. Most of the faces are uncertain, with a few exceptions: the uncomfortable guilt of Jeremy’s, the outrage of Matt’s, the awkward stiffness of Jean’s. Neil turns his attention directly to Jean and asks, “Jeremy?” 

“I—” Jean starts. He raises his hands helplessly. 

“No, that’s awesome,” Neil says. He means it. “If only you’d realized this six weeks ago.” 

Jean grins at him, his face flushing. Next to him, Jeremy looks as though he’s trying to sink through the floor. Understandable—Neil’s going to assume Jean at least told Jeremy the truth before they started making out, but Neil can see how that certainty could subside beneath Allison’s indignant anger. 

When a heavy thud sounds, Neil pulls his attention from Jeremy’s crimson ears and returns it to Allison. She’s standing over one enormous cookbook and has another chunky volume in her hand. She points it between Jean and Neil and says, “You have some explaining to do.” 

“We weren’t really dating,” Neil says. “We were pretending.” 

“Pretending?” Matt asks. 

Neil nods. “Jean was having a problem with someone who wouldn’t back off, so we just said he was dating me instead. But now, you know. Jeremy.” 

“Okay,” Dan says, clapping her hands. The whistle over her athletics shirt bounces high enough that she has to catch it and set it still. “We’re not going to ask for details—” 

“Aren’t we?” Allison mutters. 

Dan raises her voice and keeps talking. “If Neil and Jean weren’t really dating, then Jean isn’t cheating on him.” 

“How not-dating were you?” Matt asks. “Not to be weird, but—” 

“But there was evidence,” Allison chimes in. “That there was _someone_.” 

“Was there?” Neil asks, surprised. 

“You need to pay a lot more attention to your necklines,” Allison says. “Are you saying that _wasn’t_ Jean?” 

“We don’t want to push Neil to tell us something he’s not comfortable with,” Renee says gently. 

“What Neil told us is that he doesn’t swing,” Allison says. “And then he does Jean this favor or whatever and starts looking like he’s finally getting laid. And now Jean is somehow, something, whatever with Jeremy. But what about Neil? What if _Neil_ had feelings?” 

“Oh, I don’t,” Neil interjects helpfully. “None at all.” 

“Well, I call bullshit on it being all fake,” Allison announces. “We’ve all seen the signs.” 

“Yeah,” Aaron taunts. “We have. You haven’t been very discreet, Josten.” 

The discomfort Neil had seen painted on Jeremy and Jean’s faces creeps its way onto Neil’s. He can’t out Andrew, so he’ll have to create another lie. Except that, unlike Jean, Neil doesn’t have the time to corner someone else at their locker. 

“So we know Neil _is_ dating someone,” Allison says decisively. “Or at least hooking up.” 

Neil considers his options. Kevin would probably back him up if he claimed they were secretly together, out of sheer, stubborn loyalty if nothing else. He could say it’s Aaron, turn it into a joke and get a little payback for Aaron selling him out like that. There are a couple of non-team people who might do him this kind of solid if he could get to them before any of the others did. He could even say it was Riko and transform this whole thing into absolute chaos to bury the truth. 

“Neil?” Allison asks, exasperated. “Do you need me to kick one of their asses?” 

“Down, girl,” Dan says cheerfully. “Neil, what I think Allison is asking is, does this mean you actually are on the market?” 

“So many people have asked me about you,” Allison says. “If you need to get over Jean, I’ve got you covered. That hot senior in the theater program is an option, at least three of the cheerleaders, and, _oh_ , there’s this one guy who graduated last year and is _so_ good looking, he texted me about a month ago blatantly fishing for information. Just say the word.” 

Neil perks up. This is an unexpected but profoundly appreciated escape route. If he says yes to being set up, he can bypass the ‘who’ question altogether. Faking first dates can’t be harder than faking a committed relationship, right? 

Before he can take her up on that smokescreen, he hears Andrew’s flat voice say, “No.” 

“No?” Allison echoes, blinking in surprise. 

Neil is so used to Andrew at his side that he hadn’t consciously registered it—had been too focused on Jean’s plight and then the onslaught of questions. This isn’t the kind of thing Andrew usually interferes in, anyway, unless he’s thought of a way to mock it, so Neil is to be forgiven for not thinking to look to Andrew for help. 

But it’s not really help that Andrew seems to be offering. The hand he splays on Neil’s back could be comforting, but there’s something more assertive in the way he slides it around Neil’s waist and tugs him closer. Neil goes, easily, willing to move with whatever Andrew’s plan is, even if he has no fucking idea what it may be. 

“Not unless you want us to have a problem,” Andrew answers easily. His hand dips lower, tucking around Neil’s hip in a gesture that leaves even Neil with no doubt as to what Andrew is really saying. 

Neil stares, astonished, at the familiar angles of Andrew’s profile. Predictably—probably the only predictable thing happening—Andrew ignores him in favor of levelly watching the play of realization on the faces of the group around them. It seems to be a fairly short journey for everyone—much shorter than Neil thinks is appropriate. Dan’s isn’t a journey at all. She immediately beams, her eyes bright, her face glowing with self-satisfaction. 

“Ugh.” Allison sighs. “We _do_ have a problem. You just cost me a hundred bucks.” 

“ _Two_ hundred,” Dan corrects smugly. “You forgot about the second part.” 

Neil turns a little into Andrew, putting a little weight on the embrace to see if Andrew withdraws. He doesn’t. Neil ignores the low chatter of _“I told you so”_ and ‘ _wait, “how much do I owe you?_ ” and turns a look of silent question on Andrew. _Why_? And also, _what_? 

“No more fake boyfriends,” Andrew says. “I do have limits.” 

“Only real ones?” Neil asks. 

“Limits, Neil,” Andrew says sternly. 

“No one looks as surprised as I feel,” Matt complains. “How many of you knew about this?” 

The number of hands that rise take Neil aback: Kevin, Aaron, Dan, Jean, and Jeremy. 

“I tried to tell you,” Dan tells Matt. 

“I’m with Matt,” Allison says. “This is bananas.” 

Aaron cuts in quickly, grinning widely. “Well, I’m very happy for you two. We should double-date sometime. I believe you already know my girlfriend, Katelyn?” 

Neil almost trips over his own tongue in his haste to reply. “Oh, that sounds awesome. Is tomorrow night good for you guys?” 

“No,” Aaron says. “Fuck off, it’s not happening.” 

“But you just said—” 

“God, I hate you,” Aaron says, sighing. “I was doing a thing.” 

Across the island, Kevin pushes his giraffe hood down, revealing the tipsy flush on his face. “Can those of us who have eyes go watch a movie and let the rest of you process on your own time?” 

“Fine,” Allison grumbles. “It’s Renee’s turn to choose.” 

Neil keeps expecting Andrew to release his hold, to push Neil away, to fold under the scrutiny, but he doesn’t. The arm he has around Neil stays loose, his hand tucked comfortably, his thumb absently stroking Neil’s side. Maybe it’s only Neil who feels a little exposed, like everyone will know now how much he thinks about Andrew, how little space Neil keeps between them in his mind, how grasping and bloodthirsty his feelings for Andrew really are. He lets that fanged thing flap around in his chest and leans into whatever ease Andrew has that keeps him solid and calm at Neil’s side. 

The first scenes of _The Cabin in the Woods_ send light flickering over rearranged piles of Foxes. Both of Jean’s arms are around Jeremy this time, back in the spot Neil shared with them before. At the other end of the couch, Neil has his own arm draped over Andrew’s shoulder and across his chest, with Andrew tucked in close enough that the press of fabric makes Neil’s skin prickle. On his other side is Kevin, his back against the arm of the couch, a bottle held in both hands, his feet kicked up across their laps. It’s perfect other than an unruly halo feather that Neil has to keep blowing away from his nose. 

No, strike that. It’s perfect, feather and all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is now the time to mention that this entire fic is, in many ways, inspired by @redFreckles' [Deadly Attractions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7141955) which lingered long after I read it?
> 
> Come visit me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/alittlelately) as @alittlelately and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/likearecordbb) as @likearecordbb
> 
> If you have requests for drabbles set in this first, leave them for me here! I might cobble together a wee little epilogue or extra chapter of future things or things from other POVs if there's anything you guys want to see.

**Author's Note:**

> Intense and everlasting gratitude to my Executive Producer, @yeoldetabbe, who has signed on with me for the long haul and has about 15 years of experience in saving me from myself. Thanks, boo.


End file.
